


When the Snows Fall and the White Winds Blow

by JoJo



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Broken Bones, Community: fandom_aid, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Magnificent Seven AU: ATF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-03-31 03:31:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3962803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A team in harmony, individuals in chaos.  </p>
<p>During a wild snowstorm and each nursing their own problems, Chris and Ezra find themselves holed up together at Chris's ranch - with worse closing in than bad weather.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Snows Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Niko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niko/gifts).



> a long-time-coming gift fic for niko who generously donated to the Typhoon Haiyaan appeal
> 
> with many, many thanks to winks7985 and farad, who asked the right questions and made it so much better - all mistakes my own!

_When the snows fall and the white wind blows, the lone wolf dies and the pack survives_

(Eddard Stark, George R.R.Martin, Game of Thrones)

Vin could feel the weather front coming in, and it was moving fast.

For about two hours now he’d had the mother of all headaches. It was partly tension, he knew that well enough, and partly stress, but it was also some rogue blast of arctic air approaching the area at speed through the Continental Divide. His grandmother, God rest her cantankerous old soul, had believed him gifted. She’d probably have said he was divining some kind of disaster. Frankly, he could have done without a colleague jumping on that particular bandwagon.

“Maybe you could forget the agency, become a weather medium?”

Nathan offered up the comment after observing Vin rubbing a point above his left eye for a while.

“This isn’t some psychic crap.” Vin fiddled with the Explorer’s radio, looking for a local forecast, then prodded his forehead once again.

“I know.” There wasn’t much contrition, but Vin could hardly blame Nathan for that seeing as he’d grumpily refused the offer of Advil only five minutes ago. “It was just a thought.”

“Say, how long we got?” Buck wasn’t as good-humored as he might normally have been about Vin’s supposed meteorological clairvoyance. None of them had been very good-humored of late, but Buck in particular. He was sitting in the seat directly behind Vin, who was at the wheel. And from his jiggling it was clear what was on his mind – turning right around and heading to the ranch, weather warnings or not.

“You’re not going there, Buck.” Vin didn’t take his eyes off the interstate heading north of the city, just kept looking ahead. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Nathan in the passenger seat shift and look into the back, probably to gauge how heavily they might have to squash Buck’s reckless streak.

“I’m just saying.” 

“What you just sayin’?”

“I’m just saying I’m not happy leaving Chris out there, not like he is.”

“Yeah, but what can we do?” J.D. sounded jittery. 

“Nothing,” Buck growled, and Vin grimaced at the boot that kicked the back of his seat.

“We all feel the same.” Josiah, in the far back seat, projected his voice so it filled the dark. He was faintly scolding. “But we have work we can’t ignore. People we can’t ignore. Got to get to Broomfield, Chris or no Chris.”

“What do you think he’s going to do?” Nathan twisted even further, so he could eyeball Buck directly. “He’s on administrative leave, they aren’t saying he’s crazy. He’s not being treated for depression, all right? Not.”

“Hell I don’t know!” Buck shifted and shuffled in his seat, uncomfortable and frustrated. “Something stupid, nothing stupid. Just he’s carrying the knee injury, never mind he’s not himself – and you know Chris has never been taken off a case before.”

“I don’t like it either, none of us do. But Josiah’s right, we’ve got to wrap this up tonight. No point letting everybody’s good work go down the drain. What can we do, you know? If Travis thinks he needs medical leave for more than the knee – OK, OK, administrative leave – then it’s serious.” 

“That’s my point,” Buck huffed.

Nathan was blunt. “Listen, if psych services are even involved – and I don’t think they are – they’re probably just jumpy because of that agent suicide in Atlanta. This decision sure isn’t a surprise given Chris’s load right now. Guy’s still grieving, and the pressure sure never lets up. On top of that he took one helluva kick to the knee the other week. He’s on painkillers, that’s all. And maybe something for anxiety, but we don’t need to get hysterical running around after him every minute. Sure we need to keep a close eye on him – don’t we always? – but right here, now, in the middle of an op? Like the kid says, what can we do?”

“Er... call Ezra?” J.D.’s answering suggestion sounded a little resigned, and a lot uncertain. “I mean, he’s the only one who can go over. Least make sure Chris is all right.”

There was a collective, stodgy silence.

“Yeah, do it, Buck,” Vin said, and turned the radio volume up.

*

When his cell phone vibrated, Ezra was mid-game. It was getting close to ten o’clock in the Wildcard Saloon in Black Hawk. He was a fat two hundred dollars ahead and coasting to a lot more. The money was already banked in his inside jacket pocket and he fully intended to double if not triple his winnings some time over the next hour. The last thing he needed at this delicate point was an interruption, but he knew he couldn’t ignore the call. Team 7 were in enough bad books right now without him breaking protocol – again. Especially not for the sake of gambling. Such things and such people as were now grouped around the casino table with him were part of the reason for Atlanta having turned so ‘complicated’, as Mother would have it. It was all part of the web of character and circumstance that even now made others reserve judgment on him.

“Gentlemen.” He was polite but wary. These particular individuals were not friendly local gamesters having some out-of-town fun in the mountains. They were small-time professionals who’d come in from the west coast, dangerously alert to the possibility of swindle. The type of people he really oughtn’t to keep getting himself tangled up with. Especially when his Federal issue weapon was locked in the Jag’s glove box and they were probably packing hardware. They were somehow fascinating though – swaggering chancers he instinctively disliked, and yet couldn’t seem to resist. “You will have to excuse me for a moment.”

There was a general unwilling dismissal. 

As he rose and cleared the table Ezra held his cell closer. He could see Buck’s name on the little screen. Turning away he tapped the receive symbol and put the phone close to his ear, saying nothing.

_“Yello? Ezra?”_

“Of course.” Ezra kept his pitch low and smooth. “I’m not in the habit of lending out my cellphone to all and sundry.”

_“Yeah yeah.”_ Buck swept aside the languid chippiness. _“Listen. Boys and I are going to Broomfield early – Travis has been in touch.”_

Ezra felt a flare of optimism of the kind he tried hard not to run with too often. A sudden redemption for a gloomy Thursday evening perhaps? An early end to his suspension?

“You need me?”

_“No.”_

The flare was soused with an almost audible hiss. “No,” he repeated, flat.

_“Not for the op. Nothing’s changed there, hoss. We need you to go check on Chris.”_

“Oh, please.”

_“Ezra...”_ Buck’s tone had turned harsher. _“Travis has grounded him. Taken him off the case, off all the cases. And it’s not because of the knee. Sent him home on medical leave until further notice. Gave us the impression Chris isn’t doing too well with it.”_

Ezra made a minuscule turn, just so he could get the table back in vision, gauge what kind of mood the other players were in, if they were surveying him. At the same time he tried to get his head around what Buck had just said. 

Chris, grounded – the great and terrible Larabee with his wings clipped.

“Tell me then, what did he do?” Ezra kept his tone sardonic.

_“Nothin’ for Pete’s sake! Haven’t we all seen how he’s been? Although... ah hell, well maybe not.”_

There probably wasn’t time for a ‘what’s that supposed to mean?’ session, so Ezra didn’t start one. He translated the words for himself easily enough anyhow – Buck and the others considered he had no empathy for other people’s troubles, and so wouldn’t see a team-mate in distress. Not even if he tripped and fell over them.

“Well if that’s the case then he’s out at the ranch, laying low.” Ezra was cool. “I’m sure he’s fine.” He raised a placatory hand in the direction of the table, received a bank of aggressive stares in response. “Mad as a wet cat, of course. But basically fine. And I’m sure he wouldn’t want me of all people going over to disturb him.”

_“I don’t care what he’d want. Fact is, one of us needs to check he’s OK, and that one of us has to be you. There’s weather coming in and we just need to know th-”_

“All right, all right,” Ezra cut in, impatient. “Stop, I get it. I understand. You’ve all agreed. You want me to drive out to the ranch. Check Chris is OK, whatever that means. Right now.”

_“Yes. It’s called teamwork.”_

Ezra’s eyes narrowed. “I know what it’s called, Buck. I even know what it is.”

There was a pause and a sigh on the other end of the line. _“Yeah, yeah I know you do.”_

“Well fine, I’m on it.” Buck would have no idea how far out of Denver he was right now, probably imagining him sitting around in his warm condo, but at least he was on the right side of the city for the ranch. He could probably make it in forty minutes. “And you all set for the shakedown?”

Another sigh, but a softer one this time. _“You know I can’t tell you anything, Ezra.”_

Yeah, Ezra knew. Suspension, even temporary, was a bitch. Which is why, contrary to what Buck thought, he probably knew exactly how pissed Larabee was feeling.

“Well take it easy.”

_“We will.”_

No ‘you too, man’. No ‘thanks, catch you later.’

Stung, he touched red before Buck finished the call. Pocketing the cell he swung briskly back towards the table, looking with regret at the hand still face down in front of his place.

“You in or out?” It was the best player who spoke, a solidly well-fed guy with an expensive but tasteless suit. Ezra didn’t know anything about him except that he was from California. They hadn’t introduced themselves to him, or he to them.

“Out.” Ezra slid his jacket off the back of the chair. 

“Just like that, huh?”

“I am afraid so.”

“Well, you forfeit. And we need to know you’ll give us a chance to get even.”

The faint menace didn’t pass Ezra by, although it wasn’t his main thought right now. It stuck like a metal plate in his craw to forfeit what was turning out to be one of those golden, unexpectedly profitable evenings. These three were passably good, enough to be a challenge, and he’d desperately, almost compulsively, wanted to outwit them for the second time in one session. He flexed his hands. A return match probably shouldn’t be pursued, either. It might be an everlasting fight, and one that wore him down sometimes, but his responsibilities were clear and he wouldn’t shirk them tonight. Long as they weren’t going to shoot him on the spot he’d surrender the golden, forbidden evening of profit for the sake of duty. 

“Fine.” Ezra made a gesture, graceful and conciliatory. He met their eyes, briefly. “Another time, then, sirs. I know where to find you. But for now business calls.”

“I’ll bet.” A slight pause, and then the man in the suit put his elbows on the baize and leaned forward with an unpleasant smirk. “Seen your fancy car, Ace – you’ll be back.”

Ezra shrugged at the leering tone, slung the jacket over one shoulder. If he really put his mind to it, he could clean out every last one of these wannabe high-rollers, that was the kicker. He sensed their eyes were on him as he walked across the casino floor towards the Men’s Room. He’d already paid two visits since he arrived an hour and a half ago, more unsettled than usual, but he by-passed it now, headed for the cashier and the exit. This was the last kind of club he should be in, and he knew it. One more piece of gambling-related trouble, Travis had said – just one more – and he’d be out. No matter what kind of citations for bravery he had on his records for balancing the counter-weight.

But Hell. Walking that line was just what Ezra did.

A blast of freezing cold air hit him as he went out into the night.

*

“So?” 

Nathan clearly hadn’t been able to tell how the conversation had gone just from Buck’s side of it. They’d settled in traffic piling out of the city as the weather deteriorated, the line of vehicles moving slowly north on Route 36. It had been silent in the car while Buck was on the line to Ezra.

Buck stuffed his cell back in his jacket, settled into his seat. “He’s going over, but he’s not too pleased.”

“Ezra being pleased isn’t exactly number one priority here.”

“Yeah well.” Buck shrugged. 

Nathan shuffled in discontent. “Why’d Travis decide to change the schedule anyhow – surely not just because he’s going on vacation? Man, you’d think he might’ve decided we should stick to Friday so Chris had someone around right now. Must know he’s not in a good place.”

“Chris will understand more than you think.” Vin spoke up from the front, dogged with loyalty. “Just because he’s committed to the job, don’t mean he won’t see what’s going on. He’ll understand why Travis had to ground him.” He paused. “Even if he don’t like it.”

“Just take it all in his stride, huh?”

Vin hedged his bets slightly. “Maybe.”

“He’s been very low,” Josiah said, meaningful.

“Yeah.” Vin took one hand off the wheel and rubbed his head again.

“What’s our ETA?” J.D. asked, unexpected, jolting everyone back to the matter in hand.

“Fifteen minutes,” Vin said, and made a face at the snake of tail lights in front. “Give or take.”

There was some quiet, a readjustment back to mental preparation for the shakedown operation they were headed towards. Nathan couldn’t quite leave it though. When it came to other team members’ well-being, he never could.

“Have you thought what Ezra might do if Chris isn’t all right?”

“Oh he’ll think of something.” Buck flapped his hand to illustrate the wide and wonderful world of Ezra’s ingenuity. “Besides, we’re all agreed. Chris is just low, just needs a friendly face, nothing weird is going to happen.”

Quiet reigned again for a while. Then Josiah cleared his throat. “Um, do you think Chris will see Ezra as a friendly face?”

There really wasn’t an answer to that.

*

It took Ezra longer than he thought from Black Hawk to the ranch. He was glad he’d kept himself in check, hadn’t accepted the booze he’d been offered. Gusts of wind buffeted the car, tugging it off course, and he’d noticed how low the night sky hung as he’d crossed the lot on his way out.

“Good lord,” he said out loud, soon as he’d jabbed on the radio. The facts wove in and out of his consciousness, crackling through the airwaves.

“Winter Storm Warning alert... Thursday through Saturday... fast-moving arctic conditions scheduled... accumulating... metro area... mountain locations... snow totals in feet.”

Delightful. Heatwaves he could handle, but snowstorms were something of a mystery and the Jaguar wasn’t a snow car by any stretch of the imagination. He’d need to move fast to stay ahead of this. His new plan instantly became to show his face to Larabee, pacify the rest of them, and then get back to cosy civilization asap.

There was an oppressive type of dark pressing in all around as he turned off the highway on to the road leading out to the ranch. His headlights picked up how the wind was whipping at the winter trees. The temperature gauge had dropped and he guessed the storm was coming in fast all right. As usual he cursed going over the un-treated sections of the private track leading directly to Chris’s. Every time he came here he said to himself he wouldn’t put the Jag through it again. Great car, lousy suspension. At every rut he expected the tail pipe to scrape gravel. 

There were few lights on in the ranch house when he rounded the final corner and drove through the open gate. Chris wasn’t on top of the weather conditions, he could see that straight away. Larabee’s Dodge Ram was out, not under cover in the first of the double bays of the garage. The doors of the second, where he tinkered with machinery and vehicles, were wide open, shuddering in the stiff breeze. Across the wide courtyard it looked as if the currently unused stable block at least was secure. 

He swung the Jag in a tight circle in front of the Ram and reversed into the empty garage bay, leaving plenty of room for a second vehicle. As he got out and locked his doors, a gust of chilly air made his jacket flap open, cold air punching against his ribs. Hunched against the wind Ezra ran for the back door of the ranch house. The movement-sensitive security lights were unresponsive. Another bad sign. The door was often unlocked but he wasn’t in the habit of just walking into Chris Larabee’s home as if he belonged – not like the others did. Instead he banged on the panels with the flat of his hand to announce himself. 

“Hello, the house!”

There was no immediate answer so he banged again then turned the handle a little, wincing slightly. The security lights might not be working, but it would be just his luck if Larabee had fallen down in a stupor somewhere – while making damned sure the burglar alarm was primed first of course.

“Hey!” he bawled. “Chris! You in there? It’s–”

Then he nearly fell through the door as it was abruptly wrenched open from inside.

“Me,” he finished off.

Larabee stood there, in the half-dark entry hall that led into the kitchen. His hair was violently on end and he was still in his work pants and socked feet, although had lost his tie and jacket. Not surprisingly, his expression was forbidding.

“Ezra,” he growled, glancing balefully past him into the dark as if expecting more visitors.

“Yes,” Ezra said, in impatience. He paused for another second, saw he wasn’t going to be welcomed in with open arms, and so pushed past Chris, back heeling the door closed as he did. “Lord’s sake, it’s freezing out there. You all right?”

“Course I’m damned well all right.”

Ezra turned, because Chris was still standing by the door. He looked him up and down in exaggerated fashion, taking in the crumpled shirt half pulled out of his waistband, the wildly disarranged hair, and general pallor. “You sure?”

“Yes I’m sure. That why you’re here?”

“Well, since you ask so nicely, it isn’t exactly a social call. Heard about the enforced medical leave. Came to make sure you weren’t drowning in it.”

“What the fuck? Who told you?”

It’s called teamwork, Ezra wanted to say in the kind of pissy tone that would make Chris crazy, but he refrained. “Travis told the others of course, because Friday’s op was being brought forward. Buck called. I presume it wasn’t supposed to be kept from me?”

Chris rubbed his face. “They think I’m going to do something stupid,” he said in disgusted wonderment. “And sent you over to make sure I didn’t. What the...”

A slight smile quirked at Ezra’s mouth. Larabee was pale and rumpled, but he was still on good form. “Well, I’m the only one not on assignment, as you’ll recall,” he said. He thought he did well to keep the residual resentment out of his voice. And Chris would recall all right, seeing as he was the one who’d lobbied for the two-week suspension. 

Yeah, Larabee hadn’t stopped bitching since it happened, although it was hardly surprising. Even though he could feel irritated if he put his mind to it, Ezra realized that jeopardizing an operation in pursuit of something not in the brief hadn’t exactly covered him in glory. Outwardly he’d maintained his view that a gambling-related telephone call during a quiet phase of an operation was hardly the pinnacle of bad behavior. Deep down he knew he was in the wrong, and Chris deciding to slap a ‘Do Not Trust’ notice on him had hurt, badly. It had even made him think about leaving altogether. That was probably why he’d been in Black Hawk in the first damned place.

“Ugh,” Chris said, suddenly seeming to remembering how he was feeling. “I was just about to have a drink. You want a drink?”

Ezra glanced out of the window, mind on his own drinks cabinet, his own kitchen. “Well, I was thinking...”

“Yeah, I can see what you were thinking.” Larabee was sharp. “Telling the boys you’ve done your duty – and leaving.” When Ezra winced, he made a sardonic, open-palmed gesture. “Tell me I’m wrong.” 

Ezra kept quiet. It didn’t ever seem like a good idea to contradict Chris when he was in poor temper. 

Larabee pulled at one trailing shirt tail, as if uncomfortable. “Well normally I wouldn’t stop you, but have you heard the goddamned weather forecast?”

“Yes, but–”

“‘Yes but’ my ass, Ezra! You’re not going anywhere. In fact, according to the Weather Channel, now you’re here you may not be going anywhere for twenty four hours.”

That brought Ezra up short. He stood with his hands on his hips, staring at Chris staring at him. The kitchen was in semi-darkness and they were facing off across the cool slate-tiled floor.

Twenty four hours, he thought in sudden despair. Twenty four hours stuck here with Chris Larabee in an unholy snit! He cast a desperate look out of the kitchen windows, then swung his gaze reluctantly back to the man across the room.

“You really think it’ll be that bad?”

“Yeah,” Chris said, smirking slightly at his dejection. “Reckon you’re done for.”

Ezra let his chest fill with air. He felt the pull of solitude, of home. “Well damn it,” he said.

Chris indicated the hallway with a jerk of his head. “So are you coming in properly or are you going to stand in my kitchen grinding your teeth all night?”

“You need to get your car under cover, and batten down the hatches out there.”

“Ha,” Chris said. “Might be a problem with that. Just took the meds they prescribed.”

“And?”

“Feeling a little high to tell the truth.” 

Ezra cocked his head. Now he came to think of it, perhaps Larabee did look a mite spaced. The man was lucid enough, but there was an air of recklessness about him that made the hair prickle on the back of Ezra’s neck. There were not many people he’d care to see strung out less than his team leader.

“And you were going to have a drink on top of that?”

“What are you, my keeper all of a sudden? Listen, I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but I need to... shut right down for a while. Figure a nice whiskey to ward off the cold wouldn’t go amiss either. Know what I mean?”

Distracted, Ezra looked around the kitchen again. “Where are your keys?”

Chris patted the back of his neck with the fingers of one hand, as if he meant to scratch it, made a face. “Jacket pocket?”

With an exaggerated sigh, Ezra walked past him, up the woodblock hallway past the curve of the open tread stairs and along into the main living area. Not surprisingly it was something of a mess. Chris had been wayward in all departments in the run-up to being taken off the case. There were piles of paper in the room and on the carpet – a mix of newsprint, letters and what looked like copies of official documents – as well as empty coffee cups and glasses, a few crusty TV dinner trays, an array of photographs, CD cases, and the contents of a box spread liberally on the rug in front of the largest of the couches. With a frisson of unease Ezra realized they were mostly personal, women’s items. Sarah Larabee’s, almost certainly. 

There was no fire laid in the grate of the big fireplace, and few logs in the basket on the hearth. Chris’s suit jacket from today had been thrown on a chair and his gun and holster – totally against security protocols – were dumped amongst the cushions. Ezra picked through the detritus on the floor and retrieved the jacket, silently rummaging through the pockets until he found the car keys. Chris had limped into the room behind him and just stood, not very steadily, watching.

Ezra thought about calling Buck, or Vin. Just to tell them he’d found Chris upright and conscious at least, and that they had nothing to worry about – just as he’d said. But then he figured they’d be right in the middle of things in Broomfield about now, setting up for the shakedown – in which neither he nor Larabee was permitted to take a part. He passed Chris in the doorway without looking directly at him, went back out through the kitchen.

Not liking the sour feeling of the atmosphere outside, Ezra crossed to the Ram, climbed behind the wheel. It growled into life, just like its owner. He reversed the freezing vehicle and parked it alongside the Jag. Force of habit made him check out the glove box before he left, in case there was anything needing to be taken out. There were some car documents in there, a driver’s map of Colorado, and a small brown bottle. Hissing through his teeth, Ezra snagged the bottle. He couldn’t see what was on the label, although it seemed about three quarters full of whatever it was. He stuffed it into his inside pocket next to the comforting roll of notes from the Wildcard Saloon, then climbed out of the Ram.

Since the remote on the car keychain didn’t seem to work, he wasn’t able to completely close the doors by hand, had to leave them open a few inches. The second bay was full of stuff – hunks of machinery, a gutted vehicle on a ramp, tools all over the place. From deep inside the interior came the slow-ticking, wet sound of water dripping on concrete. Shuddering from the cold he struggled with those doors, too, reluctantly leaving a two foot gap at the bottom. Hoping it was good enough, he jogged speedily back towards the house. The air was already full of angry, swirling flakes.

All was quiet in the kitchen.

Ezra locked the back door, figuring Chris wasn’t in the frame of mind to think about it right now. He took the little bottle out of his pocket to examine the label in the light and was relieved to find it was only regular Advil. Deciding he might need some himself later on, he put it back in his pocket. When he walked back along to the lounge area he found Chris slumped on the large couch. There was an open bottle of J&B Whiskey in front of him on the table, and two glasses.

“You eaten?” Ezra asked as he came in, loosening his tie.

“Yes, mother.”

“Really?”

A tut of irritation. “I made a sandwich before I took the meds. All right?”

“And did you eat it?”

It felt as if he was skating on thin ice, but evidently somebody had to. 

“Yes, I fuckin’ ate it.”

“Fine.” A pause. “You feeling OK?”

“Ezra.” Chris picked up the bottle and poured a shot into each glass. Ezra didn’t miss the tremor in his hands. Then he set the bottle back on the table with a rap. “I feel like shit. That’s why I’m here. Are you going to spend all night asking me dumbass questions?”

Ezra sighed. “Tell you the truth I don’t know what I’m going to spend all night doing. I hadn’t been planning to spend all night here doing anything.” He perched on the opposite couch. Chris gestured rather vaguely at the second glass. Ezra wanted it all right, but he wondered if he shouldn’t aim to keep his wits about him. And not even because of the weather. He took his cell out of his jacket pocket, set it down on the small table beside him.

“You know,” he said, “you have a hole in the roof of your car-port. The junkyard one. And the remote for the doors is on the fritz.”

Chris sipped his whiskey, put down the glass. “Huh.”

Something about that, about the fact of it and Chris’s reaction, made Ezra’s stomach plunge. He’d not been too long in Denver, in this team, but long enough to have made a mark and to have formed decided opinions of his team-mates (and vice versa of course). Larabee, for example, was perennially on the ball, didn’t let things slide. Not in any part of his life. Ezra had thought of him as a classic law enforcement hard-ass, which he both loathed and admired. 

He knew about the Larabee family history, of course, the shocking story of the murdered wife and young son. It was a tragedy that he could hardly bear to contemplate, truth to tell. Somehow, though, when he’d first met the man, he’d expected never to be touched by it. He hadn’t bargained on catching any glimpses of grief under what seemed like a well-hardened surface. But the way the other guys seemed to feel, the little signs of Sarah and Adam dotted around the ranch house – he was alarmed to admit these things had actually... gotten to him. Then there was the way Chris had been the last few weeks, with the anniversary of the terrible event and all, sinking into a frame of mind that seemed nearer breakdown than perpetual bad mood.

Not mending a hole in the roof of the garage seemed much more indicative of Chris’s mental state than anything else all of a sudden.

“These meds,” Ezra said, tentative. 

Larabee got that look then, a knowing half-smirk of amusement and disgust. “These meds,” he mimicked. “Well, which ones are you talking about?”

“There’s more than one?”

A snort. “Yeah, blue ones to make me calm, and white ones to make me happy. And then I may have taken some Advil for the road home.”

Ezra thought for a moment. He wasn’t sure if Chris was stringing him a line. “Sounds good,” he said, and Chris gave him that off-kilter smirk again. “Of course, I’m not convinced liquor is the ideal carrier.”

“I’m not either, but sure tastes good.” Chris looked at his glass although he didn’t reach for it again. Not straight away, anyhow. He leaned back against the squashy cushions of the couch, shut his eyes. Ezra flexed his hands, wished he could get comfortable. Over the months since the Atlanta furore and then his crash-landing in Denver there had been a number of invitations over to the ranch. Generally at the same time as one or two of the others rather than whole team jamborees, for they spent enough time crowded in a bunch at headquarters or on ops to want to spend all their downtime together too. Ezra had soon realized that Chris didn’t give a shit about social niceties – if Ezra was being invited at all, it meant that they regarded him as one of them. Which was a bizarre concept that he hadn’t gotten his head around. At any rate, despite the handful of times he’d been here (and had a good time, if he was honest) he still found it hard to feel as at home here as, say, Buck or Vin seemed to.

And damn him, Chris Larabee knew that perfectly well.

“Lighten up, Ezra,” he suddenly said, without opening his eyes. “What’s on your mind?”

“Several hundred dollars is on my mind.” He couldn’t help a sigh of regret. “Maybe several thousand.”

“Yeah?” Chris cracked a lazy eye. It lit on the whiskey and he pushed himself up so he could reach it. When he’d had another sip he seemed to register that Ezra was staring at him drinking and he raised a brow. “Listen, I’m too bushed to get up... come get this for crying out loud. You sitting over there looking like you need a large shot is getting on my nerves.”

There was an extra loud howl of wind at that point, cannoning down the chimney and making the windows rattle. 

“All right,” Ezra said. “All right.”

“I knew I could appeal to your better nature.” Chris’s voice was faintly slurred, and his eyes, watching Ezra approach the table and help himself to a generous slug, were beginning to look hooded. “So. You been out tonight doing something you oughtn’t?” The question was disappointingly lucid.

“We all have our preferred method of R&R.” Ezra flinched under the direct stare he was receiving. “And gambling is not against the law.”

“Regarded as a weakness by the bureau, Ezra.” Chris’s voice was matter of fact. 

“And we all have our weaknesses.” Ezra let his eyes rest on the bottle of whiskey, rather wished he’d refused a shot, which would have strengthened his case.

Chris seemed to hesitate, as if working to get his words together for a moment. Then he said, “You need to stop.”

Ezra swallowed. “I know.”

“Don’t want you to get yourself kicked out. There’d be no coming back from that, and it would piss me off. You need help, I’ll find you help.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Really.”

Ezra swallowed again. “Really,” he repeated firmly. 

Chris eyeballed him for a second more and then shrugged. He was giving the impression that there was a fight here that he fully intended to have, but just not right now. Ezra was rather disconcerted that Larabee had turned the tables on him.

Despite the direction of the conversation, the fumes from the liquor went some way to making Ezra relax. He had a feeling the central heating in the house had been on but wasn’t anymore. It was just about warm enough in the room, but wouldn’t be for too much longer. As he settled and took a small sip he glanced over at the fireplace, wondered if he could find it in himself to build up a fire, invest time in getting it going. Perhaps it wouldn’t be worth it, even for the hospitable warmth. With any luck, Chris was going to start winding down soon. Hopefully, before long, he’d be asleep. Either right over there on his couch, or else in his room if Ezra could persuade him to go there in time. Heat would help in the process, of course. It would help him, too. Ezra disliked the cold with vehemence, had already found a Colorado winter crept under his skin and made his bones hurt.

“You want I crank up the heating?” he asked.

“What’s with you being so obliging?” Chris leaned back, cradling the glass against his chest. He waved his other hand. “Whatever. It’s been playing up, but you want to fiddle with the damned dials, be my guest.”

It wasn’t a ringing endorsement of an invitation, but Ezra didn’t mind. He left his glass, went out of the room and up the corridor to a large hall closet, at the side of which was the main thermostat. The system, as Chris had said, involved several dials needing to be synchronized with small red marks. Not entirely self-explanatory without an instruction manual, but Ezra quirked his brow at the idea of the challenge. Dials, marks, and numbers were the component parts of safe-opening, which was something he could do with his eyes closed thanks to his mother – not that he ever needed to these days of course. It was not a skill he’d added to his résumé either, and none of the others knew just what a gifted bank-robber he’d have made. He hoped the undercover aspect of this crazy new job wasn’t likely to involve him or any of his team-mates in that kind of fake heist, for he feared they wouldn’t be too impressed at how little training he would need.

Still, no point thinking about hypotheticals. Back in the main room he could hear Chris asking with a heavy dollop of skepticism if he could work out what the hell he was doing.

“I got it,” he called back, gratified when, after a few subtle turns, the system locked into place. The thermostat mechanism had responded in a very similar way to a lock tumbler, and he’d worked it just by touch. Squinting at the tiny numbers he could see the heating would carry on for another couple hours before switching itself off again. Which seemed just fine. Ezra hoped he’d be tucked up in one of the spare rooms by then, sleeping away this foul night, to wake in the morning for as quick a getaway as the snowfall allowed. 

“’kay,” Chris said when he came back in, watching from his sprawled position as Ezra pulled the cord to close the drapes over the two large picture windows. “Well aren’t you the domesticated one.”

“Don’t need to have been married to know how to run a house,” Ezra said, and as soon as the words were out of his mouth he regretted them. Sitting carefully back on the couch, he could see the tightness around Chris’s mouth. Not a huge change of expression, but enough to suggest a sudden tension.

“Being married’s all right.” There was a long silence Ezra didn’t fill. Chris’s gaze swung to the box of items spread on the carpet, then jerked away again. “Didn’t think it would be, not even the day of the wedding. But turns out it was.”

“I’m sure.”

“Sarah didn’t like it here much,” Chris carried on and Ezra’s heart sank. A certain range of practicalities, and some entertainment, he could manage. Beyond that, he was all at sea. “She always said this was my dream home and not hers. Guess I did railroad her into coming. What she wanted was to sell up, move in nearer the city, so’s we could have a place with a flower garden and neighbors, friends nearby for Adam.” He looked into his glass, took another good gulp. “Reckon she would have grown to love it in the end – only she didn’t get given the fuckin’ chance.”

Since Ezra had absolutely no idea what to say, he didn’t say anything. He’d actually never heard Chris mention his late wife before, and hearing him speak his son’s name out loud, in a voice thick with grief and longing, made Ezra’s fingers clench slightly against the couch. Instead of replying he found himself draining his glass and when he set it down, empty, on the occasional table at one side of the couch, Chris’s sharp ears caught the sound. He invited him to get up for a refill with a wave of his own glass.

“Shouldn’t you think about going to bed?” Ezra said, swinging the conversation to what he’d been thinking about before.

“What?”

Ezra licked his lips, nervous. “Shouldn’t you just... I don’t know, give in to the meds and go get some sleep? I thought that was what you wanted.”

“Yeah, well you’re here now. Can’t leave a guest sitting up all alone.”

“Bullshit,” Ezra said.

“Pretty much.”

“So you’re going to drink yourself into a stupor right there?”

“Yep, reckon I am.”

Ezra chewed the inside of his cheek. “Well you know there’s not much I can do if the meds and booze don’t agree with one another, if you have a seizure or something because they don’t mix. Not with a damned snowstorm going on.”

“Ezra,” Chris said, voice that slightly warning timbre that made Ezra nervous. “There won’t be any seizures and there won’t be any need for any damned ambulances, so don’t worry about it. You’re not on suicide watch, OK? I vote you have another drink.” He gave a humorless smile. “In fact, I vote we finish the bottle and worry about all the other crap in the morning.”

“What other crap?” Ezra couldn’t help asking.

Chris flapped a hand to tell him it wasn’t important, although a cloud of new gloom seemed to have descended over him and his movements reaching for the bottle were sluggish. 

“You spoke to Buck, huh?”

“He called. You know. Concerned.”

Chris didn’t react to that. He had a grim set to his lips, the one he always got when he was about to worry at something, like a cat with a carcass. “And the op’s going down as planned, right?”

Ezra felt a leap of amusement. “You’re grounded, Mr. Larabee, off the case. As am I.”

“You mean I should just butt out.”

“If you have to put it like that.”

Chris made a rude noise. “Ezra, will you come on over and get yourself another damned drink! I know you want one. You don’t need to keep a clear head on my account. Better get enough liquor inside you to see out the night.”

Still Ezra hesitated. “Before I do,” he said in the end. “Is there anything else you need me to do – in terms of battening down the hatches and all?”

Chris rubbed his forehead, apparently at least making the pretense of thinking about it. “We’re good,” he said, and picked up the bottle, again gesturing for him to come over. “Long as you don’t expect a roaring log fire and a three course dinner.”

Ezra got up with his glass, walked across to the other couch and extended it towards the bottle. Then he took it across to the windows, snagged the corner of one of the drapes and peered out at the odd shadows dancing about in the gloom. They could hear the wind against the panes.

“Just as well you have good insulation,” he remarked with a slight shiver. 

“Don’t tell me, you worked in real estate once.”

Ezra turned. “That? Actually, never.”

“Would have thought it was right up your alley. Talking folks into buying, making some shit pile of bricks sound like a fairytale castle, taking a nice big cut at the end of the day.”

“My, what a low opinion you have of me.”

“Maybe.” Chris looked, as he so often did, faintly feral. “But it’s still higher than Atlanta’s.”

Trust Larabee. Never one to knowingly miss a chance to push on the painful spots. Ezra didn’t dignify it with an answer. Their relationship had begun on this foot and hadn’t progressed much. There was even something quite familiar and comforting in it already. Strangely enough, he had the feeling Chris felt the same way.

There was quiet for a while. Chris seemed lost in thought, in his own head, while Ezra couldn’t not listen to the weather outside.

“So you reckon they’ll call us, when everything’s gone down?” Chris sounded coherent but his words came out thick and slow.

Ezra pushed back into the couch cushions. “Chris,” he said. “Leave it.”

Chris looked over at him, sullen. “My team. My op.”

“But you’re here, aren’t you – not there.”

“Travis didn’t give me much choice. Wasn’t just the weight of medical opinion on his desk, you know. Someone had been ratting me out.”

Ezra was surprised at the sharp burst of defensiveness he felt. “Not this team. Are you kidding? Somebody else in the building, maybe, suggesting you needed some time off, and yes, OK, with an ulterior motive the size of a Mack truck. But not us.”

“But you’re all so damned concerned. All the damned time. They haven’t said I’m crazy, you know, even though you all seem to think so. It’s stress. Anxiety. All that crap.”

Ezra thought again that he just wasn’t the right one of them to be listening to this. It should be Buck who’d evidently been to the wire with Chris before, or Vin, who spent so much time camping out here. Really, it should be one of them searching for the right answers, or any answers at all. 

“Well of course,” he said eventually, liking the look of surprise that came to Chris’s face at not being mollified. “Because you’re you. Larabee goes down, the whole team goes down.”

“Well maybe good riddance.”

“You know,” Ezra said, pained and not even knowing why, “you have a number of character traits I find hard to get along with, but up to now self pity hasn’t been one of them.”

He could feel the heat of the look Chris gave him. “Always pays to have something new up your sleeve.”

Ezra didn’t quite understand why it was, when he and Chris Larabee were together, tension would begin to ratchet up. It didn’t matter what the situation was, or what they were talking about, but at some stage there’d be tension. Ezra always found it deeply unsettling, but couldn’t deny there was something invigorating in it, too. Almost as if aware of the temperamental atmosphere the windows rattled and the lights flickered. Ezra rotated his shoulders, consciously trying to loosen up, like he did at the table sometimes, keeping nerves at bay. 

He looked over at Larabee, who was staring right back at him.


	2. The White Winds Blow

Chris had often thought about the tension between him and Ezra as well. Sometimes he figured he was just reaping what he’d sowed, and at other times he felt some kind of grim satisfaction.

He’d read Ezra’s résumé thoroughly when it had first dropped on his desk, just as he’d been instructed. Assistant Director Travis had been desperate for another man on the team at the time, up to and including a maverick with more than one question mark on his record. Chris had pulled up all the background reports until he knew the whole story of Ezra P. Standish and the Atlanta fiasco inside out. And even with that, and the way he felt suspicious and curious and combative all at the same time, the moment he first met him, Chris had really wanted Standish on the team. Vin said he’d probably seen something nobody else had – sensed it almost – and turned out Vin was right. The rest of them had been nonplussed, entertained, and then downright dubious. But they trusted Chris. His ‘I suppose that’d be me’ attitude to team leadership wasn’t straight out of the manual, but they all responded to it. Would follow him just about anywhere. Some of the work they’d done since they became seven had been outstanding. Occasionally Chris thought that maybe it wasn’t worth it – when Ezra was really yanking his chain, or one of the others was – but most of the time... yeah, a good decision.

Still didn’t mean they should be left alone together for long. Although even having him here, sitting over there on the other couch with that infuriatingly well-dressed, calculating, air of his, was making Chris think about something else other than the choking tide of black that kept looming up unseen behind his head. Perhaps it was something to do with him not becoming as naturally loyal as the others had quickly become. Ezra was still prickly, still unsure, struggling to adapt to teamwork. He gave off a determination not to hold Larabee in such high regard as the others did, and Chris liked that. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he did.

Ha, the ‘self pity’ thing. Typical Standish. Sharp as a goddamned tack, and with a vicious southpaw that’d land you on your back if you weren’t careful. 

Chris’s eyelids felt sore. It was a little cool in the room even though the heating had come on, and if it hadn’t been for that, he’d have been quite happy to slither sideways and fall asleep.

“Does this happen a lot?” Ezra asked plaintively, jerking him out of the thought.

“Huh?”

“This abominable weather?”

“Comes and goes. Some winters are worse than others. You’ll soon get acclimatized, won’t think anything of it next year.”

Ezra didn’t answer that, and Chris wondered if he was blindsided by the idea that someone assumed he’d be sticking around. He felt his eyelids droop. For a moment or two he enjoyed the lull of the wind beyond the four walls, the tempting oblivion that spread before him. He was subliminally aware once again that he was glad Standish was there. As if it gave him permission to take his leave for a while. Even with the storm, with the soporific mix of whisky and meds, he’d been fretting about his ability to sleep. Now he thought it might just be OK.

And then, out of nowhere, there was a loud crack of electricity that he felt in his jaw. 

Ezra blurted an uncharacteristic expletive from across the room.

Chris dragged open one eye. He was unsurprised to find the room pitch black. “Well damn,” he said, feeling an unworthy desire to laugh. “That’ll be the power.” 

“You reckon?” came a sarcastic drawl through the dark.

“It’s all right.” Chris could feel and hear his words coming out slow, as if his mouth was gummed up with glue. “Don’t panic, ’s a back-up generator.”

“Shouldn’t it have come on?”

“Manual switchover.” Chris tried to focus his mind. “C’n get some power downstairs – long as it hasn’t run out of fuel.” He frowned. “Not checked it lately.”

He could hear Ezra regulating his breathing – either from anger or because the lights blowing had startled him so badly. Yeah, but this was Ezra. He lived in a perpetual state of waiting for things to blow. A power outage wouldn’t bother him, surely not. Must just be monumentally pissed off. Which figured.

“Why in God’s name would you not keep your generator checked?” Ezra was pissed off all right. “This is Colorado, right? And it is winter?”

Chris tried to keep an inappropriate chuckle out of his voice. “Keep y’hair on. Jus’ let a few things slide lately is all. No reason for the fuel to be out. Was fine last year.”

“Last year?”

The desire to let loose a jaw-cracking yawn was probably another inappropriate response to the situation, but Chris couldn’t help himself. Even though he couldn’t see much the room was starting to rotate. He just wanted to swing his legs up on the couch, lay his head on the cushion and let Ezra put a damned rug over him as he spiraled away into nowhere for a few hours. 

“Uh huh,” he managed.

There was an offended silence, and then Ezra said, “So I guess this means I have to go find the generator?”

“ ’s’in the second carport.”

Another heaved sigh.

Chris struggled again to focus his thoughts. He didn’t find the dark shocking. It had dropped on him more like a welcome blanket, pressing him into sleep, which was what he wanted. But Ezra wouldn’t let him. The guy seemed tense as all get-out, demanding to know where the hell this was and how to do that.

‘For God’s sake, Chris,’ came Sarah’s voice in his head, half laughing, half scolding. ‘Do I have to do everything?’

Strange how he could only hear her properly anymore when he was full of liquor. 

Then there was Ezra’s voice hissing, “Flashlights,” close to his ear, jerking him awake again. He guessed he’d zoned out for a moment. “Chris, you say you have some flashlights? I need one if I’m going to do anything with the damned generator.”

“Ugh.” Chris worked his mouth, reluctant. “Boot room.”

He felt the couch move as Ezra pushed himself upright muttering, “Just better have batteries in, that’s all.”

His head buzzed lightly and he gave into it for a second, aware that there was also some faint banging in the distance. The thought of Ezra crashing crossly around in the dark was bordering on amusing, although he knew that wasn’t very grown-up of him. After a while a ghostly light travelled across the floor, bounced off the walls a few times.

“See,” he said, indistinct, triumphant. “Batteries!”

There was a pause, as if Ezra couldn’t understand what he was saying. He felt a press on his shoulder that was kind of nice and then the voice close to his ear again. “Won’t be long, but you stay right there, hear me? Don’t, whatever you do, go falling over and hurting yourself.”

Chris flapped a hand in muzzy agreement, although didn’t know if it had been seen. Then the light began to retreat. 

“Whoa,” he murmured, feeling a draught around his face. It was almost as if the weather was already inside. The sound of it was so loud that he didn’t hear Ezra leave exactly. Just suddenly it was all black again and there was nothing but the wind buffeting the window, spitting grit down the flue of the chimney and rattling at the roof tiles. 

For a while after Ezra had stumbled blindly from the room Chris found the intense dark and whiskey effect irresistible. Even though he hated craving such numbness he let himself drift off, hoping to hear Sarah again, but he couldn’t. When he came to again, he felt reluctant to engage. From far away he heard a low droning sound and a faint flare of light touched his closed eyelids. Must be the generator kicking in. It was only after another few seconds that an unease scratched around in his brain. Didn’t really sound like the generator, come to think of it. 

Chris’s cheek twitched in a grimace, and then he let himself fade out again.

*

When he’d gone to find a flashlight in the boot room off the kitchen, Ezra had located a coat. Well, it was rather flimsier than a coat. More like a waxed jacket, smelling of horses. He’d shrugged it on over his suit jacket anyway, flicked up the hood.

Really he’d hoped very hard not to have to go out into this weather again. At least, not until a calm morning sunshine was gleaming off the new-fallen snow. That had been the picture in the back of his mind: heading back to civilization in daylight (however hard the journey), leaving a healthily snoring Chris behind him. Damn Larabee. Damn his unfit-for-purpose electrical circuits – both the ones in his house and the ones in his damned brain.

He unlocked the back door again. The storm rattled him as soon as he got it open. Fast-moving flakes slapped his face, sharp with cold and speed. There was already snow underfoot, settling in a small drift under the doorstep and against the fence.

To begin with he made an educated guess about the right direction straight to the garages. The flashlight illuminated the driving flakes in front of him, then finally the outline of the building. He was sinking into snow already. Ruinous on his shoes. The doors of the bay where the Ram and Jag were parked were shuddering on their hinges but seemed secure. He still had Chris’s car keys in his pocket and he tried the remote again, just in case. Nothing. There was just enough room for him to get through the gap he’d had to leave under the doors of the second bay. He picked his way with some caution around the dark hulks of metal, sweeping the light along the floor and to each side of him. The sound of dripping made his teeth grit. Water, electricity, and dark – a lousy mix. 

At the far end of the building was a small door, unlocked. The space inside was untreated brick, smelling like petroleum and not housing much more than the generator. The machine in question was a hulk of freestanding gray and black metal, surrounded by orange-colored pipes. There were various circuit boards indicated on the top, thick wires on the lower half, plus a fat, red switch. Easy. If there was fuel in the canisters.

He’d been lucky earlier in the evening, and still felt lucky now. Putting the flashlight down on top of the generator, Ezra flicked the switch. There was a sharp crack, then a low, guttural hum. Lord knew if that was the back-up lights going on in the downstairs. He hoped so. He listened to the rather temperamental sound coming from the machine, wondering if he had the wit to check if the gas was topped up, and if it wasn’t what he’d do next. To his confusion there was a sweep of light through the small window high up on the brick wall. He heard the sound of grinding. Not from the generator. This was from outside.

It was a car engine trying to plow tires through snow.

At first Ezra had the wildly optimistic thought that the Broomfield op had been canceled and the Explorer had arrived at the ranch, full of friends and assistance. Then another thought crashed into his gut.

Black Hawk.

Ezra’s heart began to speed up. He’d been right to be suspicious of those bastards – and for sure they’d been suspicious of him. Maybe they’d followed him.

No, he told himself, mind racing but thought processes calm. No, not possible. They couldn’t have gotten here in this weather, not so quickly. This must be a neighbor, local police, county environmental officials – not those three guys. Because, how? 

Unless they’d outplayed him, nailed him with a tracker. He remembered their eyes, throwaway comments they’d made about his car, the two bathroom breaks he’d taken, the way they’d looked at him, not glancing away for one second while he’d been talking to Buck. Oh God, and he remembered what he’d said to them before he left. Business calls.

Stupid, Ezra. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Even though it was only a couple hundred dollars he’d won from them, and not a glorious jackpot, Ezra knew their kind of old. These men were petty enough to want their money back, and just about ambitious enough to hope “business” meant the chance to make some more. He wondered bitterly what they thought they’d seen in him, what they hoped they’d find. Did he look the type to be sitting on a stash of stolen property or something for Heaven’s sake?

Ezra grabbed at the flashlight, angry at them – and at himself. He aimed the beam at the floor, away from the carport doors. His mind had homed in first on his cellphone, sitting inside on a table, and then on his standard-issue Federal weapon snug in the glove-box of the Jag along with his I.D. Couldn’t do anything about the cell, but the gun... He needed it in his hand – now – because they’d go for the house. Chris was in there, in the dark, defenseless, out of his head on meds. Ezra’s stomach clenched.

He had to get to him. This was his fault.

The sound of his shoes on the concrete floor was flinty, diamond-hard in the grit underfoot. When he reached the doors he switched off the flashlight and put it on the floor. He ducked down low, tried to get a look outside.

There was a vehicle – he could see the back of it, and it looked like a pretty solid all-wheel drive. It had made it here well enough, but now was slewed at an angle, as if the driver had, at the last, lost control. Ezra heard shouting voices, tossed by the wind. He saw feet, three sets, and his instinct told him they were going to look for the Jag. Whoever had just arrived was on the search, to verify they’d found their destination. Grabbing up the flashlight again he backed off from the doors, took a few steps and then dropped behind the ramp. Sure enough seconds later the doors rattled as several sets of hands tried to lift it. There was a metallic, scraping sound but Ezra didn’t think they’d lifted the doors any higher. The beam of a small, but powerful, flashlight trickled across the floor, sawed up and down a few times showing there were no cars inside. Then it disappeared. More muffled came the sound of rattling against the other doors. Ezra couldn’t tell if they’d been successful.

He risked returning to the doors, getting his head and shoulders outside so he could see better. Wet snow slapped into his face, wind-tossed flakes melting on his lips and in his eyes. The visitors were nowhere to be seen.

Ezra rose to his feet in the open, flipping up the jacket hood once again and stuffing the flashlight into a pocket. He wasn’t hopeful, but he fished out the remote. Nothing doing. With the wind and cold he had no luck trying to lift the doors to the bay where the Jag was parked. 

So his cell was no good. His gun was no good. And Chris’s gun was no good.

But Larabee, he knew, was like him. He had enemies, and so he had a spare weapon. Ezra believed, if he remembered the conversation correctly, that it was up in the main bedroom. He wasn’t sure where exactly, but at least he knew the approximate location.  
He was grateful the unwelcome visitors had left their trail of prints from the garages towards the house, although the thought of feet was disheartening. His own were weighed down by thoroughly drenched $400 a pair Hugo Boss evening shoes. Delightful things they were – five-hole lacing, classy black leather, elegant, oval toes. An impulse buy he’d paid for with winnings from one giddy night in Las Vegas three months ago. 

Served him about right.

Going back to the house he kept low. It was partly against the weather, but also out of instinct, reducing the target. He couldn’t see much while he was out in the open, but he reckoned some of the back-up electrics were functioning – there was a dim light in what he guessed was the kitchen area. Upstairs was pitch dark.

Upstairs.

Ezra reached the house in a wild slither and backed himself up against the nearest wall, heart hammering. No point announcing himself at the back door.

Just as well his mother had taught him how important were the twin weapons of stealth and surprise.

*

Chris slept.

Not deeply, or well. Every so often he was vaguely aware of the wind. It floated at him out of the gray haze, an irritation. The sea of oblivion he wanted to wallow in somehow wasn’t as enveloping as he’d hoped. After a while some of the sounds from outside began to seem strange, and the hum in his ears became unsettled. 

And then he remembered what he should have said.

No, don’t go in there, Ezra, it’s dangerous right now. 

Clarity slopped through his brain. The garage pitchy dark and all that crap in there and the water coming through. Jesus, damned southerner could electrocute himself! Blow the place sky high. Never mind that he probably didn’t have the right coat or shoes.

“Ezra,” he said out loud, commandingly. As if he could be heard. For a second he listened, head cocked. Then, trying to ignore the sudden nausea, he tipped himself sideways off the couch and on to his feet. It was the first time he’d been upright since letting in his unannounced visitor. His head might have been swimming but somehow he couldn’t tell. It wasn’t pitch dark anymore. Although no lights had come on in the living area he could tell that there was at least one shining somewhere. So the generator had kicked in, at least where the fuses weren’t blown. Somehow it didn’t make him feel any easier since he figured he’d been dozing on the couch for a while. If Ezra had managed to get them some electricity, surely he should be back by now? 

Something seemed to be pushing on his chest. For a moment Chris couldn’t decide if it was the fatigue, the meds, or just plain worry. Then his feet started to move him cautiously out of the room and along the passage towards the kitchen. He swept one arm out to steady himself along the wall because he felt weirdly unsure of the width of anything. He could hear the howl of the wind even clearer out here and shivered, a violent, unexpected vibration of muscles. The darkness was slightly less opaque in the kitchen, but only because of the window. Shadows danced about on the other side of the glass.

Snowflakes. On a mad, wild dance, whipping backwards and forwards.

Coat, he needed his damned coat. And a flashlight.

He swung towards the boot room, no longer feeling his way. Being off his head seemed to at least have the advantage of inhibiting his caution – not that he’d ever been famous for zealous care of his own well-being. Maybe that was one of those traits Ezra found so hard to damned well get along with. 

Inside the door he prodded at the light switch but nothing happened. Then he swiped at the shadowy coat hooks, expecting to find his waxed jacket. It wasn’t there, so he pulled down the nearest garment he could find, a thick padded affair with a false fur hood. It wasn’t his, had been left here at some stage by some visitor. It took a moment to locate the second flashlight. He turned around, feeling about on the familiar shelves, knocking over some jars of something, hearing one roll across the tiled floor. His eyes felt heavy, almost painful in their desire to shut. In fact he thought he could easily have slid right down the wall and gone back to sleep there quite comfortably. 

“Damn it,” he said, annoyed with himself for a number of things. For drinking on top of the meds, for having taken the meds instead of throwing them back at the doctor, and most of all for letting himself sink so low he’d gotten grounded in the first place. He was aware that he was muttering under his breath and shook his head, angry at himself for that, too. He was halfway back to the kitchen, dragging the coat behind him because he didn’t yet have the coordination to put it on, when he remembered from the feel of the tile on his soles that he didn’t have shoes on his feet either. What he needed were those new pull-on snow boots – Snowfuse they were called, which seemed almost hilariously apt. Only trouble was, he had no recollection where they were – except not in the boot room. Retracing his steps yet again he managed to find his ordinary work shoes by tripping over them near the couch. Smart Hush Puppies, which wouldn’t give him much traction. Hell knew how Ezra had managed in his shiny Hugo Boss. He fastened the shoes clumsily and then made for the kitchen again, even more confident of his way this time.

He knew, subjectively, that he wasn’t feeling the cold as he should. There was something stupidly exhilarating about the idea of setting off into the heaving dark, although at the same time he still had this nagging concern that he shouldn’t have let Ezra. Such an ever-loving townie, did so hate to get his hands dirty.

Only that was a damned ridiculous cliché. Ezra Standish had been hired principally because he was so good at getting his hands dirty.

Chris thought he ought to put the hooded coat on. Only, now he came to think of it, it wasn’t in his hand anymore.

He took a step towards the door, was about to reach for the handle. A shadow, fast and black, reared up in the glass, shocking him, and then the door sprang open, pushed hard from the outside. Chris felt the surprise, the icy cold blast of air. 

‘Ezra!’ he was about to growl. But he felt his feet sliding from under him, the flashlight dropping from his hold. Something rushed him, sending him backwards towards the table. He felt it hit him in the small of his back and then he was spun, landing face down on the hard wood with a slap. Even in his cloudy state he knew there was a gun muzzle pressed into his side. His feet scrabbled for purchase. Fury coursed through him, a pointless sort of emotion for he couldn’t control it as he normally would. It didn’t fire his reactions, just hurt his head. His feet were walking in nothing. Someone – someone stronger than him – was controlling his staggering walk up the corridor. He thought he was back in the living room, knees bumping the carpet as the need to vomit overcame every other thought.

*

Sneaky-thief house entry wouldn’t normally have been much of a problem. The ranch house had double insulated windows, sure, but they weren’t very modern. On any normal day of the week Ezra would have been confident in his housebreaking skills. Only, on any normal day of the week there wouldn’t have been a freak blizzard howling in his ears. The waxed jacket was made for mildly blustery weather, not for this, and by the time he’d begun to hoist himself up on to the portion of flat roof under a window, he was soaked through. Not to mention intimidated by the climb.

Vin Tanner was the one who excelled in clambering up and down things. Ezra had a brief vision of one of his earliest ops in Denver, of Tanner scaling an impossibly unhelpful set of pipes in order to gain sniper’s height.

“Monkey in another life, Mr. Tanner?” he’d asked when Vin was down again, bitingly sarcastic rather than full of admiration like the others.

Vin’s eyes had merely crinkled at him. 

“Called evolution ain’t it?” 

The easy lack of offense had made Ezra feel a prickle of shame.

Just now the wind blew the hood of the jacket off his head and Ezra wondered how Larabee’s blue-eyed boy would have fared in this. Undoubtedly better than him he decided, not without some bitterness. Since he hadn’t fastened the jacket in the first place his suit was sodden and his hair was plastered icily to his skull. His hands were frozen, too, and that was no help manipulating a tiny pick. All he wanted now was just to get himself indoors. Never mind what he’d do once he was there, or who found him. Just get out of this weather. The lock he’d located moved a fraction. Since he couldn’t clearly see what he was doing, or hear it, the operation had to be undertaken on touch and ability. When the window moved some more, the frame rattled, almost flimsy. He just had to hope the sound of incoming weather didn’t carry downstairs.

Soaked through, he toppled rather than climbed in through the briefly open space. Pulling the window shut behind him he crouched, still, on the carpet. The room was pitchy dark. He counted, to regulate his breathing, to mark the seconds. His ears were still full of the wind, but after a while he came back online, could hear the house was quiet. A moment or two more and he caught the staccato murmur of voices from downstairs.

Ezra slipped the pick back into his suit pocket, rose to his feet. He was in the one of the smaller bedrooms. When he’d fumbled to get the flashlight out of his pocket and switched on he could see the room was full of boxes and clothes. There was icy water running down his face and in the absence of anything else he grabbed up a t-shirt from a pile on the bed and rubbed at his dripping hair. He toed off his saturated shoes because he figured they’d squeak. Then he shrugged off the drenched jacket, letting it slide quietly to the floor as he felt his way to the door on the search for a gun. 

*

“Who the hell are you?”

Chris heard his own rasping voice frame the question. He had to try it several times before they could either understand or chose to respond.

“Doesn’t make much difference. This your house?”

Chris pulled his head off the floor. He’d thrown up just under the couch where Ezra had been sitting earlier. The action had made him feel just a little clearer. Not much, but a little. For a moment, anyhow. Now he angled himself away from the acid puddle. He could see a pair of loafers, had the impression there were at least two men in the room with him, maybe three. Head movement made him dizzy so he shut his eyes for a second, squeezed them, then opened them again.

“I own it,” he mumbled. “You’re trespassing.”

“Yeah? How about we just needed shelter from the storm?”

“Who the hell are you?” he said again.

There was a sound of irritation, but still no answer. Chris heard some objects tumbling to the floor from across the room. He heard the clink of a bottle against a glass, and then a yelp of delight.

“Pay dirt! This here’s practically a feebie. This here’s... hold on, Christopher J. Larabee of the A.T. and F!”

“You have got to be kidding me,” growled the voice closest to him.

There was the sound of something hitting the palm of a hand. Chris managed to get himself to sitting, let the living room whirl around him. At his back was the couch. By his left knee the small table with Ezra’s half empty glass and cellphone on it. Just above, when he angled his head, a thickset man examining his I.D.

“And here’s his piece.”

Chris blinked his gritty eyes. His heard was hurting like a sonofabitch and his throat burned. While the thickset guy and another one were turning over his weapon in their gloved hands, his fingers closed around Ezra’s cell. He nudged it off the side of the table and into his lap. Then he grasped it in one hand, slid it behind him. He kept his other hand flat on the floor, in plain view.

The thickset guy in what Chris thought a cheap suit looked over at him. “A federal officer, huh? Thought we’d found ourselves some hick horse rancher.” He looked at the glass on the table by Chris’s head. “And where’s your friend? He ATF too?” He turned Chris’s Glock 23 over in his hand. “We know he’s here. Followed him from Black Hawk.”

Chris knew what was in Black Hawk. His heart sank at Ezra’s carelessness. Nevertheless, he let out a sour laugh for their benefit. Far as he knew, the cars were in one garage bay and these guys wouldn’t have been able to gain access. Far as he knew, Ezra was still out there in the other one, which they didn’t seem to know. Hopefully laying low and not planning any stupid heroics. He gestured at the empty glass with his head. “He’s no federal agent,” he said, hoping he sounded halfway convincing. “And anyhow he left already.”

Cheapsuit tested the weight of the Glock. He appeared to consider Chris’s contention. “Don’t think so,” he said. “Who is he? Gambling buddy? Your dealer?” He smirked. “Boyfriend?”

Chris just stared at them, sullen. He rubbed his belly, nauseous again. Both the other guys had wandered from the room and Chris could hear drawers being opened in the study along the hall, the sound of items dropping to the floor. There was a small safe in there but there wasn’t anything valuable in it. He didn’t have much cash on him and hell, they were welcome to his credit cards if that was what they were reduced to. Ezra now... he evidently had something that they wanted. 

Cheapsuit had stuck the Glock in his pocket. He’d seemed impressed with it, but not very familiar with handling. Chris hoped that was a good thing. Now Cheapsuit was prowling around the room, kicking aside the contents of the boxes Chris had been blindly going through over the last few days, heading for shelves and drawers.

Blinking away the swirling dizziness once more, Chris maneuvered the cellphone back into his lap. All he needed was a few seconds. His mouth felt tacky, full of saliva, and he kept somehow pushing down the impulse to vomit again. He knew Ezra’s passcode, and they all shared the same speed dials. But the numbers wouldn’t come immediately. They hovered for a moment out of reach in a cloud of alcohol and medication. Elusive. He pinched his eyes shut again, mind reaching. 

Ezra’s passcode. His eyes popped open again. Eleven thirty nine. 

Eyes flitting up to Cheapsuit’s back, Chris swiped. He tapped numbers and then green, his fingertip tacky. The old code he and Buck had come up with years ago, that’s all he needed – 3 medium pizza – and predictive text was his friend.

Not even waiting to check if the message was sent, he pulled the cell behind him again as Cheapsuit turned around. This time he pushed it right away from him, under the couch.

He heard the stride of feet up the hall, a heavy tread up the stairs.

Cheapsuit wandered over and went down on his haunches, studying him. “You on drugs?” he asked and Chris was almost shocked. What the hell must he look like? “Where is he?”

“Told you, he left.”

The man tensed and Chris knew he was about to be hit. The blow to his face, even anticipated, was harsh. Sent him sideways. His instinct would normally have been to retaliate, but he knew how dangerous that might be in this situation. He knew he was weak, knew he needed to keep his wits about him.

“Tell me about him. What’s his name? Where does he live?”

Shit. Chris realized he was in for a beating. The second guy had re-entered the room. Chris pushed on the carpet, trying to right himself.

“Yeah, up you come.”

Chris found himself hauled on to his feet, swaying between the two men. His stomach seized as he was hit again, a warning blow across his jaw, the second guy stopping him from falling. Then more, splitting his lip, making pain and stars explode across his eyes. He’d hoped the fact that they were wearing gloves would cushion the effect, but it seemed not. He was shaken until his teeth rattled.

“Just tell us what you’ve got here. Tell us where we can find him.”

Chris just huffed at them, trying to scowl through his rapidly swelling lip. He was punched to the floor, dragged up again. And now there was a high-pitched whining noise in his ears.

“What the hell?” he heard vaguely. 

Then he was being dragged from the room, out into the hall. There was shouting, but he couldn’t tell from whom. He sagged on to his knees, was allowed to hang there.

It was like a bad dream. There was a partial light out in the hallway, although from halfway up the staircase, where the flight curved behind a balustrade, everything looked dark, like a tunnel. He felt sick, disorientated. He wondered if he’d gotten the right speed dial for Buck after all. If there had even been a signal on Ezra’s cell. Out here it could be unreliable at best. And in this weather. The wind howled in his ears. Voices from above. Then some cursing and a thumping sound. 

Chris remembered the pile of trunks and crap he’d left at the top of the stairs. They’d been there days and he’d been blindly stepping over them every time he went up to bed. He almost wasn’t sure if he was hallucinating, but a shadow came bowling out of the dark. Time slowed down, the image breaking and forming.

Somebody crashed out of the tunnel in a blur of momentum, hit the balustrade overhead. The wood split instantly, hardly breaking the fall. There was a single, splintering crack of weakened timber, and it gave way. 

“Jesus!” someone yelled.

A familiar figure hit the hardwood floor of the hallway.

At the sound of impact Chris’s stomach seized so hard he almost passed out.


	3. The Lone Wolf Dies

Ezra had crashed to earth. He’d landed badly, on his back, head bouncing. Then he was just there, laid out in crooked relief amongst the splinters. His hair was wet, his shoes missing. 

Chris felt mired in meds, whiskey, the beating. 

He saw the curl of Ezra’s fingers, reflexive, pained, scraping against the wood. 

Had to get to him. There was still a part of him firing on as many cylinders as it could find, as if he had his own generator on standby. 

“Uh uh,” Cheapsuit said, blocking his way. It wasn’t hard. There was blood running into Chris’s eye from a cut and he felt as if he had nothing to propel him. The second guy was already at Ezra’s side, roughly going through the pockets of his wet, crumpled suit jacket. Ezra made a feeble sound of protest. The third guy, lanky, blond, and pale as wax, was picking himself up from halfway down the stairs. He seemed shocked as well. 

“It’s here,” the second guy said, and a fan of notes flapped. “Looks like all two hundred.”

For a second the breath caught in Chris’s throat, and then, “Two hundred dollars?” he heard himself echo, uninhibited in rage and disgust. “You just threw him down the stairs for two hundred dollars?” He felt a hard slap to his head in rebuke.

“Nothing else? He a feeb?”

The searcher pursed his lips, pushing the unwanted items back in the pocket. “Car keys,” he said. “Bottle of painkillers. No gun.”

“What’s his name?” Cheapsuit repeated to Chris. “He live here, or just visiting?”

Chris wagged his head, then sucked in a breath as Cheapsuit approached Ezra, front foot lifted as if he was going to kick him in the ribs. “Stevens,” Chris said in a rush. It was instinctive, the need to protect, and he plucked an unused identity from his mental files like Ezra plucked cards from a deck. “Ed Stevens. Like I said, he’s a friend. Lives in town.” 

“Huh.” Cheapsuit cocked his head, looking down. “Why don’t I believe you?” Then he glanced up at the blond, lanky guy, still picking his way very slowly down the stairs. “You all right?”

“Man,” said the guy, reaching solid ground. He pressed a hand to the wall, looked shaky. “Goddamned gambler jumped me, and then in the dark... with all that crap at the top of the stairs... shit.” He had a slight, European accent Chris couldn’t identify. Like some kind of stunt magician the guy seemed to have survived a dangerous tumble with nothing but his pride shaken up. The Marvelous Blondini.

Chris’s stomach twisted again as he looked at Ezra, still lying there with his eyes blinking groggily open and closed, weighted to the hard floor. “Let me,” he said, teeth locked in a clench. “I need to help him.”

Cheapsuit held his hand out for the money and then addressed Chris. “What have you got here? Although I guess it doesn’t matter if you don’t tell us. We can turn the place over if we want, take our time.” He didn’t seem like a leader as such, just the guy who thought of things first. “Let’s get ‘em in the main room. We can keep an eye on them there. Not that they look like they’ll give us much trouble. Get up, Larabee. We’ll deal with your friend.”

“Don’t fuckin’ touch him.”

“Reckon he’s a little busted up.” The Marvelous Blondini was faintly uneasy but not wanting to show it. “But he’ll do better off this floor.”

Chris felt a wave of helpless fury. He knew what Nathan would insist – leaving Ezra covered up where he’d fallen, until professional help arrived. Hell knew what damage had been done, and he’d hit the ground hard. 

“Don’t,” he said, but he was already being hauled back on to his feet, half dragged back towards the living area. His legs were like jello, his balance wrecked, and they didn’t seem worried he’d try and take them on. They deposited him back next to the couch where the cellphone was secreted, went out to bring Ezra. Chris couldn’t do anything to stop it. He could hear the sound he made when he was picked up and it made him feel sick. They put Ezra on the carpet next to where Chris was uselessly slumped, and then Cheapsuit stood over them both.

“Turns out this ‘business’ of yours is at the house of an ATF agent, Ace,” he said addressing Ezra directly. “You never told us it was that important. And let me see... you left in the middle of a lucky streak to come out here in the middle of a snowstorm, so that would make you – what exactly?”

Ezra seemed disoriented. When he rolled his head away, he let out a huff of discomfort and Chris couldn’t help ball his fist in reaction. Cheapsuit caught the move and narrowed his eyes. When Chris just stared at him in sullen silence, he raised a pudgy finger. “Don’t worry, Mr. Feebie, we’ll work it out. This guy’s something to you. Maybe something your bosses wouldn’t like very much, huh?” He turned to his friends. “OK, guys, let’s see what else we got hiding away in this place. Your flashlight still good? There’s that other one in the kitchen, yeah?” The guy Chris had dubbed Blondini nodded. They were all being careful not to call one another by name. Cheapsuit addressed the last of the trio. “Stay here, make sure our spaced-out feebie doesn’t find his feet.”

With Cheapsuit and Blondini out of the room, the last guy wandered across to the other couch where he’d spotted the TV remote. Then he sat down, aimed it at the set. Chris was amazed to hear the sound come up, and then felt his heart squeeze. Incongruously cheerful music was playing. He’d heard it dozens of times before, on a loop. Magical carpet bags, dancing chimney sweeps. Despite his best efforts the movie had been one of Adam’s favorites. The guy on the couch made a noise of disgust and changed channels. Too late, though. Chris already knew what his name would be. Poppins. 

He had to drag his head from the memories before they choked him. Trying not to draw attention to himself he moved nearer Ezra.

“Hey.” 

To his intense relief, Ezra responded. His eyes were slashes of clouded green, rolling a little before they focused on him. A half-baked realization drifted across his pale face.

“Tell me what hurts.” Chris pressed a shaky hand to Ezra’s forehead, to keep both of them grounded. His stomach was still roiling and the desire to give in to sleep was tugging at him, an urgent, insistent niggle.

Ezra’s tongue appeared on his lower lip, feeble. He made a faint sound but offered no words.

“Your back?” Chris pursued.

The squeeze of eyes seemed to suggest Ezra was trying to work it out. “Uh uh.”

“Legs?”

Another sound, almost satirical, but not quite. 

“OK, can you move at all?”

Ezra swallowed. He flexed the hand nearest Chris, teeth scything his lower lip. 

“OK, OK, take it easy, try and keep still.” Chris licked his own dry lips, glanced again at Poppins before angling himself to get the hidden cellphone. Even through the vertigo, which just wouldn’t level out, he could see the signal had dropped altogether and it was almost out of charge. “Jeez, Ezra.” He bowed his head, getting himself together as far as he was able. While he was no expert, there was something more than worrying about the way Ezra was lying, the torque of his lower body and reluctance to move…

Rattled, Chris pushed the useless cellphone out of sight again. He didn’t want to raise Ezra’s hopes, or his own, and he wasn’t sure how switched on Poppins was. The man seemed wholly intent on the screen, but Chris wasn’t going to trust that. He could hear the other two walking around the house. They’d find a good supply of wine in the cellar, some jewellery of Sarah’s and his mother’s upstairs, at least one good laptop, a tablet with a crack in the screen, phones, maybe a credit card or two, some cash. And, of course, the gun in the bedroom, if they looked hard enough. Which wasn’t loaded.

He sighed. “Reckon I know what you were doing upstairs. Thanks for that.”

Ezra clenched his whole hand in irritation. “Fucking trunks,” he got out.

Chris swallowed. He wasn’t going to defend himself, but he wasn’t going to take the whole rap either. 

“Fucking friends of yours,” he bit back. “What the hell you bring them here for?”

It was Ezra’s turn to swallow. Even now their relationship remained the same. But then he suppressed a wracking shiver which scraped at Chris’s nerves. 

“Hey!” He was sharp enough to get Poppins’s instant, irritated attention. “I need blankets over here!”

The man heaved himself from the couch, peered at Ezra on the floor. He looked around, eyes lighting on an Afghan throw which had been tossed on the hearth at some stage. Picking it up he brought it over.

The Afghan was covered in hair. It had been about six months since Sarah’s hound died, but the blanket still smelled of dog. The fact that Ezra didn’t make a sign he’d noticed made Chris’s chest tighten. There was something badly wrong but he didn’t know exactly what it was. Ezra seemed paler than ever, lips bunched and tinged gray.

“Seems like he’d be better on the couch,” Poppins observed. “You want us to move him?”

“No.” Chris spoke quickly through his teeth, one hand coming up like he could do something to stop them. He was open-minded about whether these chuckleheads were going to start spraying bullets, but they could do as much bitching damage right now just by being helpful. Chris wasn’t going to listen again to that sound Ezra made when they picked him up.

Poppins shrugged, still thinking about it. 

Chris unlocked his teeth. “You want to do something, get us more blankets and get the heating on. Light a fire, chop up the damned dining chairs, whatever, I don’t fucking care! Just get this fucking room warm or he’s going to die on you!”

The cussing and d-word seemed to do it. Poppins looked uncomfortable. He turned to leave the room, raising his voice in a yell for his compatriots. Chris watched him go, surprised at the amount of words he’d gotten out. Then he felt a weight on his leg and looked down.

“Impressive.”

“Damn, Ezra.” The hand already sliding off his knee was icy. Chris retrieved it, tried to knead some warmth into the fingers and that made Ezra frown.

“Thought you...”

“Thought I what?” Chris waited for him to manage it.

“Were a hard-ass.” Ezra’s words were more mouthed than spoken, as if there was a weight on his sternum. Even so he managed to look slightly pleased with himself.

“You thought I was a hard-ass.” Chris felt a rogue smirk come. “Yeah, well I thought you weren’t so it turns out we’re both wrong.”

“Followed,” Ezra whispered after a pause. He puffed out a breath. “Think they had a tracker on the Jag.”

“You don’t say.” Chris felt a stab of anger. “Just couldn’t keep away from Black Hawk, could you. Are you never going to learn? I mean – what? They think you were going lead them to some goldmine or something?”

Ezra’s brow creased and he tried to say something else but Chris shook his head to stop him. “We’ll work it out,” he said, voice less harsh than before. “But right now you need to keep your strength up. It’ll all be fine. I sent the boys a message, they’re on their way. Just have to sit tight.”

He’d sent them a message all right. But he had no idea if they’d received it. Squeezing Ezra’s upper arm to encourage him, show him how damned sure he was, he ran a tongue over the film of crud on his teeth, rubbed his unsettled belly. 

*

The Explorer had a good covering of snow by midnight.

“Gonna need to scrape it,” J.D. observed sagely. He’d limped back to the vehicle with Josiah, several minutes in advance of the others.

The police lights were still flashing across the car-lot, and there was an ambulance just rolling away from the scene. One perfect shot from Vin had dropped their key target, who’d given the order to shoot when he knew they were cornered. Vin was good enough he hadn’t even killed him. Just for a few wild minutes there’d been an exchange of gunfire which could have gone either way. Buck had tumbled J.D. to the ground, given him a dead leg, and Josiah had taken a graze to the cheek. Nathan had shouted at them once nobody’s life was still being threatened. Vin was with the Internal Investigations guys, having the chamber of the long-range rifle checked over. He looked impatient. Apparently as soon as the first of the actual snow blew in his headache had begun to notch down a level, but he still seemed uncomfortable. 

Didn’t make much difference – they were all on something of a post-op high. Adrenaline was still coursing, keeping them a few degrees warmer than the chill that had set into their bones waiting for things to happen. And they were in the realm of talking nonsense because they didn’t want to talk about the op.

“You know,” Josiah said, stamping his feet. He touched the gauze dressing on his face. “I really prefer warehouse gigs.”

“We haven’t had a warehouse gig in forever,” J.D. agreed. “My friends think all gigs are warehouse gigs.”

“You have friends?”

“Of course. I’m young, good-looking, and fun to be with.”

Josiah regarded him from under his fur-lined hood. “Imagine.”

J.D. grinned and began using his elbow to clear the snow of the hood of the Explorer and then they heard the electronic snick of the central locking, saw through the steadily falling snow that Vin, still half paying attention to the internal meddling guys, was pointing the key remote in their general direction.

“Jeez will you look at this,” Nathan groused, jogging up towards them from where the ambulance had been parked. He brushed flakes from his sleeves, tousled his hair with a gloved hand.

Josiah had opened the trunk so they could offload some of the gear. “Time to go home.”

“How about a quick beer?” J.D. suggested.

“Josiah’s old and wounded. Needs to get home to his pipe and slippers.” 

“Where will be open anyhow? At this time?” said the temporally-challenged Josiah.

J.D. was keen, bright-eyed. “We could try that place in Eagle Bend. You know, the place near the waterfall? Sometimes they serve food until 2am.”

“You’re hungry?”

“Aren’t you?”

“I refer you to my learned friend,” Josiah said, indicating Nathan. 

“Heck, J.D., this weather’s fixing to get worse not better,” Nathan said, despondent. “Doubt we’d make it to Eagle Bend.”

“Truck has snow tires and four wheel drive, why wouldn’t we make it?”

“Make it where?” Buck demanded as he arrived, closely followed by Vin who was grumbling to himself.

“Kid wants a beer,” Josiah said.

“Well the kid has his head screwed on.”

“Hadn’t you better ask the driver?” Vin said, circling round them to put the rifle carefully into the cargo area with the camera and surveillance equipment. 

“Aw c’mon, Vin, don’t you want a beer? Unless Travis thinks of something else before his vacation, we don’t need to even be in work tomorrow. We ain’t on the new shift pattern until mid-way into next week. I’m planning to take some days.”

“Sure I want a beer.” Vin climbed behind the wheel, waited for all the doors to slam behind him and then turned the ignition, hit the heating and flicked on the windshield blades. “But in this?” He took a hand from the wheel, indicating the icy flurry being thrown off the windshield.

“Shit, by the time we all get home it’ll be breakfast.”

“So have breakfast.”

“But I want a beer. And so does Buck.”

“Oh well then,” Vin said dryly, as the Explorer skidded slightly before gaining traction. He set the blades at full speed. “If you and Buck want a beer...”

They made it as far as a scuzzy bar next to a motel about five minutes away. Seeing the Budweiser sign flashing, Buck clamped a hand on Vin’s arm and hollered, “Beer!”

“Jesus, Buck,” Vin grumbled. The Explorer skidded again, this time into a small snowbank on the street right outside. They all piled out, found themselves not quite the only patrons.

“Closing in one half hour, gents,” the barkeep said as J.D. led the charge, although it didn’t sound as if he meant that at all.

“Five beers then. You have anything to eat?”

“Guess I could microwave some fries.”

“Hey, guys!” J.D. said on the turn. “He’ll nuke us some fries.”

“Truly manna from Heaven.” Josiah was humorous.

“Hey,” Nathan said, when they were all sitting with their beers, several cartons of open, microwaved French fries, and a pile of mustard, mayonnaise and ketchup sachets in the center of the table. “Should we call Ezra up, see how things are?”

It wasn’t that they’d forgotten the Chris and Ezra situation exactly. Just that it had been pushed to the backs of their minds. J.D., Buck, and Nathan were working their way through the fries already, chewing fast, taking on carbs, sodium, and heat. Josiah hadn’t partaken yet and Vin was sitting back against the hard wooden back of the bench seat with one hand curled around the neck of his beer bottle and the other lightly drumming on the table top.

“Kinda late now. Chances are they’re sleeping. Figure Ezra had to stop over.”

“We’d have heard by now if there was a problem.” J.D. was confident, spoke through a mouthful. “I mean, Ezra would have called, right? Or at least left a message with one of us.”

“Hope he got through,” Vin said. “It’s dumping pretty bad here, but it sounds like they may have taken the full force out Chris’s way.”

“Well you can be pretty sure if Ezra got hisself stranded in the snow he’d have called to see what we were going to do about it.” Buck sucked on his beer, wiped his mustache, grinning.

“I’m figuring everything’s fine.” Nathan was being confident. “And tomorrow morning we’ll have Chris on to us complaining that we’re a bunch of worrying old women and what in hell did we mean sending Standish out to spy on him.”

“Yeah, and we’ll have Ezra on to us complaining he needn’t have gone all the way out there anyhow, especially as Chris chewed him out about something. About everything.”

“Maybe.” Buck was sanguine. “But we had to do it. I feel better knowing Chris ain’t out there on his own right now. Even more with this weather.”

“Yeah, reckon they’re hunkered in by the fire.” Nathan yawned. “Like we should be.”

“Hey how about we just sit here all night eating fries until the snow stops?” J.D. reached for a carton.

“Except I’m wanting to close up,” the barkeep put in pointedly from over at the bar. “Although I guess you’re welcome to have another round.”

“Finish up, boys,” Vin said, sounding weary. “I’d like to push on back to the city.”

“Roads still pretty clear going that way,” the barkeep said. The TV over the bar showed the plows out on the interstate. “It’s the high areas you need to avoid.”

When Vin came back from the Men’s Room, car keys in hand, he found the others putting on their coats. He passed them, was headed for the way out, when Buck’s cellphone, which was sitting amongst the debris, vibrated against the table with a harsh buzz. Vin halted, and Buck grappled to pick it up, balancing it in his palm, frowning.

“Oh shit,” he said. 

“Who is it?” J.D. demanded, evidently not sure if he was worried.

“Ezra.” Buck sounded puzzled. “But this is Chris.” He looked up, face tight. “Has to be Chris. Says pizza.”

“Chris’s mistaken you for Domino’s?” 

“It’s a fuckin’ mayday, J.D.!” He took a calming breath. “We came up with it years ago, before we knew you guys. Chris is in trouble.”

“If Chris has Ezra’s cell then guess they both are,” Vin murmured. 

“He needs help – pizza, that’s what pizza means – and he’s telling me he’s up against three.”

“They,” Vin repeated in a quiet, measured voice. “They’re up against three.”

“Yeah,” Buck said, gaze snapping to him, momentarily irritated. “They.” His tone altered again, fist curling. “And someone’s hurt. ‘Medium’. That’s our code for... medical help needed.”

The short, hanging silence of digestion. Buck stared at the cellphone in his hand. They could tell he wanted to hit reply. Let Chris and Ezra know they were coming. But that might be too dangerous. Who knew if Ezra had his phone on silent or not?

“Chris isn’t up to this. We need to get there fast, or at least fuckin’ try.” Vin was already headed for the door at a lick and Nathan had swung around toward the bar, was fumbling in his jacket pockets to pay the check.

Buck said something unintelligible and followed on, raking a hand through his hair, then pushing J.D. fast towards the exit. He extended a hand to acknowledge the barkeep as they left, sweeping out into the night air. A cloud of fumes was pooled in the frosty atmosphere and the engine of the Explorer was already rumbling, the sliding doors open.

The pace of the snowfall had slowed somewhat, but it was still steady. The road surface under the layering of snow had little grip but it hadn’t all turned to black ice yet. If nothing was blocked on the higher ground, they’d just about be OK like this. If any of the highways had been closed or were already impassable then... but none of them wanted to think about that. They’d put in a call for emergency services to the ranch, been told local cops were under pressure at some multi-vehicle RTA and couldn’t respond right away, that ambulances were finding conditions challenging and that at the moment there were no choppers up.

“Seems like we’re the emergency services here, boys,” Vin said, setting the blades to their frantic pace once again.

“How’s your head?” Josiah asked him in a low voice, climbing in behind the driver’s seat. “You all right to drive in this?”

“Still good.” Vin sounded dogged rather than truthful, but they all figured Tanner was still the one to have at the wheel. He already had a feel for how the Explorer was handling in the conditions, and he’d aced all the advanced driving tests the agency had ever thrown at him. He flicked his eyes into the rearview to address the others. “This ain’t gonna be an easy ride, boys.”

“Just go for Pete’s sake.” Buck had taken the passenger seat and J.D. was sitting behind with one hand on the head-rest, forward staring through the windshield.

Vin put the Explorer into Drive. It was hard not to slam his foot down as his instincts were telling him. Jaw locked, he eased down on the accelerator. The Explorer slithered right across the road, before Vin managed to ease it on to the right track. There was nobody else about. 

Just them, headed into the white wind.

 

*

Whoever these guys were, they couldn’t make the heating switch on again.

Chris was worried about the cold. He hadn’t wanted to move Ezra to strip off the wet clothes but Cheapsuit and co. wouldn’t bring any scissors when he’d asked. Ezra had done his best to tear Chris’s arm off with his fingers when he’d suggested that anyhow. A good suit was a good suit after all – Chris was sure Ezra would have said that, only he wasn’t really speaking much. Some time around two a.m. he’d fallen into a fitful doze. 

Next to him Chris sat on the carpet with one of the blankets around himself. Looking at Ezra’s pallor and the occasional involuntary grimace that creased his brow encouraged him to stay conscious. In the end Ezra woke with a start for no particular reason Chris could see. He feared it was because he was hurting. 

“Amateurs,” Ezra managed to slur when Chris told him about why it was still freezing in the room. They hadn’t taken to his suggestion to build up a fire either. The meds were still grumpily reacting against each other and the liquor, giving him chills, making him nauseous and off-balance. His heart kept racing fast enough it made him breathless, his face and jaw throbbed from where he’d been thumped, and his fingertips prickled. The heartrate and prickles were telling him he should probably be thinking about another one of those blue pills. They were tucked into his pants back pocket. Surely it would be OK just with water. A necessity in fact? Only – if he totally knocked himself out he’d be leaving Ezra in real trouble. His mouth felt dry and he didn’t know how his palms could be sweating when he was so damned cold.

“I asked ‘em for some tea, too, but guess they don’t feel in the mood.” In the absence of other therapy he found his mouth starting to run on. “Bastards. They’re probably going to walk out of here with your money and my stuff and they’re still not in the mood. Reckon they followed you hoping for rich pickings, and they’re pissed they ended up stuck out here.” 

“Water?” Ezra seemed fretful, and Chris knew that wasn’t a good sign.

“Yeah, got that.” Some had been tossed their way about an hour ago. 

“Advil?” 

Chris remembered the bottle. “Good idea.”

“Not... you.”

“You’re in no position to play mom, Ezra,” Chris growled. Careful, he began to unwrap the top layer of blankets to get at the jacket pocket. 

Poppins and Cheapsuit, as far as he could ascertain, were in the kitchen. Apparently most of the power and heat was now in there, which made sense. The TV had blown after a while and Chris figured it was because the un-maintained generator couldn’t cope and was running out of juice. There was just a single, dim table lamp alight in the room now, and the guy Blondini was sitting next to it smoking a cigarette. He had Chris’s Glock 23 in his lap and one of the bed quilts from upstairs draped around his shoulders.

“Gimme three,” Ezra breathed.

“Hell, don’t you start.” Chris tipped out a couple of pills. “Two. That’s my best offer and you just go easy. I’ll get your head, you just swallow the damned things, don’t go shifting around.”

“Time’zit?” 

“Getting on for 4 a.m.”

“Snow?”

“Can’t tell.” 

Out in the kitchen, judging by the sounds, the refrigerator was being raided. In here, Blondini seemed alert, and Blondini, more importantly, had the loaded gun. 

Ezra made a wavering hand gesture towards the other couch. Chris knew he was asking if they were going to make a play somehow. He’d been thinking of it for a while himself, wondering if he could get his head straight enough. None of Team 7, Standish included, were in the habit of rolling over, especially not when any of the others were in danger. The desire to defend his property was strong, too, and Chris badly wanted to sanction those who threatened it. So badly his teeth ached. 

Unexpected, Ezra gripped on to his upper arm. There was a sheen of fine sweat on his forehead as he worked up the energy. “Deal,” he whispered eventually. 

Chris frowned at him. It hadn’t been what he’d expected to hear. He bent low so Blondini wouldn’t hear. “What are you talking about?”

“Do a deal,” Ezra murmured again, his grip losing strength. “Safer.” 

“Not sure we’ve got a great bargaining hand.”

“So think of one.” Ezra’s eyes struggled to stay open. He seemed to be drifting. “Or make them.” 

Chris frowned. If Buck and the others were coming at all, whatever the circumstances, whatever the dangers or the rights and wrongs, they’d likely take one hell of a big exception to Cheapsuit and his pals. Chris knew he didn’t want blood and deaths here. Not here, in his and Sarah’s house. Ezra was a damned irresponsible, risk-taking, self-interested pain in the ass, but he was right. 

Never, ever, compound a fuck-up.

Chris looked over at Blondini. “Hey!” he said, rather wildly, to get his attention, received a ‘what now?’ glare in return. “Need more water.” He rubbed his hands down his pants, then scrubbed a jittery fist across his forehead.

Blondini hesitated, then pushed himself to his feet looking suspicious. “You all right?” 

“Don’t feel too good,” Chris said with a shudder. It was even true. “Just need a... a glass of water.”

Blondini ground his cigarette down to a stub on a wooden coaster. He drew near, the Glock held down by his thigh. “Shit,” he said. “Looks like you need more than that.” For a second more he surveyed them, and then he turned and left the room.

“Chris,” Ezra said faintly. He sounded agitated. “Don’t try and take’m on. Don’t, all right?”

Chris gave the side of his nearest arm a pat. Then another little squeeze of encouragement. “Couldn’t if I tried. You’re right – best thing for everyone is if they decide to leave before Buck and the others come in all guns blazing. Maybe they would – just maybe – if they think they’ve got something on us.” 

“What do you want me to do?” Ezra had scrunched his face in concentration, readying himself, and Chris felt a wave of peculiar affection bloom in his chest. He tugged up the blankets.

“Hey,” he said softly, “you’re busted, remember? But listen.” He bent closer again. “Whatever goes down, the others can’t know. The whole Black Hawk thing’ll come out if they do, and I know what Travis told you. I’m going to keep this team together, Ezra, if it’s the last goddamned thing I do.” The depth of his determination on the last point surprised him.

“’kay,” Ezra said woozily.

There was a bark of laughter from the kitchen then, and a few moments later, all three of the men wandered back in. Cheapsuit was busy chewing something. They were all still in their gloves, had brought a waft of smoke and whiskey into the room. Cheapsuit came and stood over Ezra again, which made Chris nervous. He got the feeling there was nothing the man would enjoy more than giving Ezra a boot in the guts. 

“Been thinking about you two,” Cheapsuit said. “Still wondering if he’s your boyfriend.” He snickered at the idea and then shook his head. “But reckon you’ve got another problem, Mr. ATF Feebie.” His brows went up. “Shakes, sweats, bellyache. Seems to me your Mr. Stevens might have come to bring you something. Could be it’s still in his fancy car. Little packet of something, maybe? What do you think – am I getting warm?”

Chris swiped at the sweat on his top lip. The ridiculous thing was, Cheapsuit was right about the shakes and sweats, the bellyache. If he put his mind to it, he thought he could even throw up again. It was a god-awful feeling. “Just need some water. And the bathroom.” 

“The bathroom, huh?”

“Yeah, my guts. Getting bad.”

“You need to score?”

“What’s it to you anyhow?”

“Shut up, Larabee,” came Ezra’s voice. Not fretful anymore. Faint still, but full of iron. Cheapsuit dropped to his haunches. 

“Business calls, you said. Would that be dealing business, Ace?” He looked over at Chris. “All gone kinda wrong, huh?” 

“Christ,” Chris said, clutching one arm round his midriff. “What the hell do you want?” 

“Working on it.” Cheapsuit jerked his head at Blondini. “Take him to the bathroom.” He looked down again. “I’ll work on Stevens.”

Oh, Jesus. That, right there. That was where this little plan could turn to shit.

“Listen,” Chris said. “OK.” He inhaled shakily. “He’s my dealer, all right? He left the stuff in his car – was out there getting it when you turned up. Came back in through a window, thought he’d try and take you on. Stupid asshole.”

A wide smile cracked Cheapsuit’s face. Chris could almost hear everything falling into place in his fat, self-satisfied head. 

“You want to do something with this, you’d better make up your mind. You’ve got my whole team on their way here already.”

“Oh, sure.”

Chris grappled behind him for the cellphone, which made Blondini tense up and raise the Glock. 

“Easy,” Ezra croaked, his head coming off the carpet and then dropping back down with a thud when he couldn’t hold it up.

The phrase “on a knife edge” flitted through Chris’s head. His fingers closed around the phone and he dragged it out, fingers tremoring. “Here, you can check it. It’s out of juice but there’s a charger in the kitchen. I sent a coded message. There’s five armed agents on their way here right now.”

Cheapsuit stared at the phone for a second as if it was snake. He looked at the other two, then snatched it up, tossed it to Poppins. “Go see if it checks out.” Then he snapped his head back to Chris. “Thought you needed the bathroom?”

“Yeah,” Chris said weakly. “Yeah, I do.”

He did, although not for the reasons they thought. Part of him wanted to tell them he was OK now, the moment had passed, because he didn’t want to leave Ezra alone with them. Not for a moment. But he knew the pretense had taken hold and that he couldn’t afford to weaken it now. He allowed Blondini to drag him to his feet.

After using the bathroom he took a look in the mirror. Bruised, swollen, bloody. He hardly recognized himself. He splashed water on his face, wincing at the burn, shivering with it. God, what he wouldn’t give for a drink right now... it was such a stupid, brainless, need – but it was so intense, so well-known it filled him with self-loathing. Hell, Cheapsuit, Poppins, Blondini standing outside the door with the Glock in his hand – none of them knew how close to the truth this situation was. Never mind keeping Buck and the others in the dark about Ezra and his goddamned, out-of-control gambling habit. They couldn’t know about this, either.

“Hurry up!” Blondini yelled at him, and banged the door with what sounded like the gun butt. Chris passed a boneless hand over his brow, pushed his way out.

Back in the living room Cheapsuit was sitting on the couch, leaning forward over Ezra like he’d been mouthing off at him. To Chris’s relief he didn’t seem to have done more than that. Blondini went to the drapes and pulled at one. The sluggish coming light of dawn crept into the room.

“Snow’s stopped,” he reported. 

A moment later, Poppins reappeared with the cellphone. “Message a few hours ago to a fast dial number. About pizza. That’s all.”

“It’s a codeword,” Chris said before Cheapsuit could wade in. When they all looked askance he went on, “How many I ask for?”

“Three.” Poppins’ eyes bugged.

“Yeah, because there’s three of you. What size I ask for?”

“Medium.” Poppins was almost meek.

“M-E-D.” He glared balefully at Cheapsuit. “Medical help needed.”

“Hey,” Blondini said. “I don’t like the sound of that. Maybe we should get the hell out of here.”

“I said we never should have followed him in the first place,” Poppins put in, and gave Ezra a sour look.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Cheapsuit chewed the side of one gloved finger, as if he was trying to make himself think straight. 

“They’ll come right after us, this bunch of ATF heroes. Or put the cops on our asses.” Blondini was starting to pace.

“Crap, not the cops,” Chris said. He let the cold slide through him, making him shiver. 

“Let’s just leave.” Blondini was allowing apprehension to drive him now. The coming of daylight seemed to have brought reality back into the house. They were not as completely cut off and insulated from the outside world as it had seemed a few hours ago. “Out of this house. Out of this fucking state.” He let the Glock slip out of his gloved hand on to a table, as if it was starting to burn.

“Yeah, we’re going.” Cheapsuit had a new conviction in his tone now, almost a swagger. “And don’t worry. He’s not going to put anyone on our asses. Not when we can finger him as a user.” He looked down at Ezra, whose attention seemed to be wandering, then back at Chris. “Right?”

Chris swallowed stickily. “Right,” he said, injecting what he hoped was the right amount of the unwilling and the resigned into his voice.

“And you’d better come up with a good story about what happened to Stevens.” Cheapsuit’s teeth showed, just for a second. “Too much J&B maybe?”

“More like too much crap on the stairs,” Blondini snarled.

“Whatever,” Chris muttered, a stab of guilt under his ribs that nearly winded him. 

Cheapsuit was on his feet now. He toed lightly at Ezra’s ribs. “You with the program here, Ace?”

For a moment Ezra seemed to try and focus on him. Then, “Oh God,” he said in a tight voice, and his eyes squeezed shut. 

Panic clogged Chris’s throat. “Hey,” he said, but Ezra just shuddered as if he was letting go. 

“Lay him out,” he heard Cheapsuit say and Chris realized they meant him. Before he could protect his face, there was a footfall.

Chris saw stars, the carpet, then nothing.

*

There was still a sheet of snow blowing crosswise across the front of the Explorer’s windshield when they finally made the turn off I70. It wasn’t as heavy as earlier but the wind was fierce. The last they heard, the emergency services still weren’t getting through anywhere much.

Vin had driven most of the way at just under half of what would have been his usual speed, and even that had caused more than one dangerous slide, necessitated some mad stunt-driving that made Nathan clutch hold of the back of Josiah’s seat and grit his teeth. They’d had to dig themselves out of drifting snow twice and all of them were wet and cold. When they finally swung on to the road leading straight to the ranch, Vin wasn’t quite sure how he’d made it. It felt as if his eyes were about bugged out of their sockets he’d been straining them so hard, and his shoulders burned. Having Buck as front passenger instead of Josiah hadn’t helped either. His twitchy anxiety just ramped up Vin’s own. 

As they approached, the vehicle struggling to grip in the thicker snow, they could see a pin prick of light glimmering out of the gray ahead. 

“Porch light,” Buck said.

Somewhere between the bar near Broomfield and here, the dark had begun to fade. The snowfall had stopped shortly after they’d left, and the wind had dropped, but fresh flakes were coiling down once more. Some hundred yards from the open area outside the ranch house the Explorer took yet another wild swing to one side, skidded, and plowed into a drift. The tires spun, the engine keened, but they weren’t going any further. 

“Everybody out,” Buck said. 

“And go careful, we don’t know what’s in there,” Nathan added.

Everything was eerily quiet in the early gloom, the normal dawn sounds muffled and the air bitter. There were no other vehicles parked out front, although recent tire tracks criss-crossed each other under their feet. Josiah pulled up his muffler, took off at once to secure the two garages with J.D. on his heels. Vin moved off like a shadow to circle the ranch house via the front steps, disappeared into the gloom.

“Back door,” Buck said, hand on Nathan’s shoulder.

They found it wide open. 

There was grit and melted snow splattered over the porch. The connecting door into the kitchen was open, too. On the table the detritus of a trawl through the contents of Chris’s refrigerator – food waste, bottles, cutlery, glasses and coffee cups. Chris could be an untidy son-of-a-bitch when he wanted, but this wasn’t his style at all.

Buck moved through the kitchen, gun drawn. They could hear no sound of voices or human activity. Nathan made a downwards, ‘easy does it’ motion with his free hand.

The house was cool. Much too cool.

There were wet footprints mingled with pieces of white-painted, split wood on the hallway floor. Nathan bent down at once, mouthed ‘blood’ at Buck although he didn’t touch it. They moved slowly, then stood still staring up at the shattered stair balustrade halfway up the flight. There was the sound of Vin moving quietly through the house behind them – he’d done his circuit in double quick time. When he appeared, white-faced, taking in the mess, he motioned his gun to the stairs, telling them he was going up.

As Vin stepped, light as a cat, on to the first tread, Buck was pushing the dining room door open. Another shambles, drawers opened, contents scattered. Coming out he heard Nathan call for him from further up the hall. The call was urgent, not trying to be quiet. Fear grasped his gut.

In the main room it was dark. He took in that there was no power and the drapes were drawn. The room seemed empty and Buck instinctively took a step over to the windows, jerked the cord. Gray light spilled in.

“Chris, you hearing me?” Nathan’s voice said and Buck turned to see him dropped down by one of the couches. As he moved forward, unbalanced, dread settling over his heart, his feet were stepping on items discarded on the floor. He saw the slumped form of Chris bent over what looked like a pile of rugs. 

The two of them were down, that was all he could think. Chris and Ezra. Both down.


	4. The Pack Survives

Chris registered the familiar voices but at first he couldn’t reach them.

“Upstairs is clear,” he heard Vin say from far away.

Much closer to his ear, Nathan was barking. “We need heat in here, and fast! Guessing he’s not doing too well on those meds. And crap he’s taken a beating.”

It was only when Nathan said those words that Chris remembered, and his jaw and the whole side of his face began to thrum.

“Ezra?” Buck sounded like he hardly dare get the name out, and Chris felt that panicky twist to his gut again.

“Looking for a pulse.”

Oh, God. 

Buck seemed to leave it as long as he could stand. “He with us? God’s sake, Nathan, he with us?”

“Whoah, Chris,” Nathan said, instead of replying. He finally seemed to notice that Chris’s head was waving about.

“Don’ touch him,” Chris slurred. In the absence of full coherence, he was fired with a fierce, incipient belligerence.

Vin suddenly seemed close on the other side from Nathan, and Buck was saying in a damned irritating, soothing way, “It’s OK, Chris. We’re here now. Nathan just wants to help him. Take it easy. He’s coming round, looks like.”

“Don’ fucking touch him.”

“That’s the cold talkin’ there, feller. It’s us, buddy.”

Vin didn’t seem to think so. He patted the side of his face to try and get Chris to look at him. “What is it, Chris? What’s the matter with Ezra?”

Far from focusing on Vin, Chris’s head was swaying back and forth. “Took a fall.” His hand came up, a sharp jerk of wayward muscles, and Vin grabbed it before he inadvertently smacked Nathan on the side of the head.

“Fall? What kind of fall?” 

“Stairs.”

“OK, easy now, Chris. Nathan’s checking him over.” Buck was still soothing, although Chris could hear the unease in his voice. Someone murmured, “How the hell did he manage that?” And then Nathan, in the tone he used to get the attention of someone he was losing.

“Can you squeeze my fist, Ezra? Here, with your knees. Try for me, man.”

Chris felt Buck start at the kicked dog sound. 

“OK, enough. Easy there, easy.” A tense pause of re-assessment. “Pretty bad, huh? Breathe it down. That’s it. We’ve got help on the way, and I’m gonna give you a shot, take the edge off.”

“No intruders here.” Josiah’s deep tone stated from way over the other side of the room. “Those tire tracks were theirs all right.” Chris could hear Ezra, too, trying to say something to Nathan and failing. 

“Whoever the hell they were they’re gone.” Buck’s acknowledgement was brief, his attention obviously on the floor.

“Get Chris some heat and some warm fluid,” Nathan ordered without looking round. “And get him off the floor. I need a check on 911 – reckon Ezra might have an abdominal bleed. Could be a pelvic fracture. He has an arm break too, bad bruising to the ribs. And he got a smack on the head. Which is why he’s talkin’ nonsense. You ain’t got nothing to be sorry for, Ezra, so quit that.”

Even though he didn’t want to be taken off the floor, Chris had no choice. He had no strength to resist either. His limbs were unresponsive with the cold, any movement made him feel hellish sick. He was overwhelmed with the compulsion to stay next to Ezra. Just in case. 

He heard Vin saying he was going to get a fire going as the power was out. Then telling Buck to sit with him as he was so unsteady. 

Josiah came off a call. “Chopper will try to go up in fifteen if the weather holds, and the cops are on their way at last. J.D. and I’ll go shovel for a landing – though it’s starting to snow again.”

“No cops. Jeeez.” Chris tried to push up from the couch but found Buck’s hand planted in the center of his chest.

“You’ve been turned over here, buddy.” Buck was evidently worried that Chris was going to try and get up, start staggering round the room. He was also fizzing with emotion. “Who the hell were they anyhow? Goddamned abominable snowmen?”

Chris didn’t respond. He tried to get a look over at Nathan and Ezra but the room span. “Don’t need the cops,” he snarled. 

“Yeah well I think we do.”

“Couple rings and a handful of cash maybe, what’s the big deal?”

Buck was trenchant, if not scolding. “Uh, Ezra lying here on the floor with a busted pelvis?”

“Oh crap,” Chris said and slammed shut his eyes. He felt his stomach attempt to rush up his throat.

Apparently remorseful, Buck inserted himself on the couch next to him, nudged the side of his leg. “You said there were three of them, right? They’ve been smacking you around, buddy, looks like they’ve cleaned you out, too. Cops need to know.”

“Tell them we’ll handle it in-house.”

“Listen, I don’t know –“

Chris’s eyes snapped open. “Just do as I say and fucking tell them, Buck!”

There was something of a seething silence for a moment or two. Then the couch dipped as Buck got up. A moment later Chris heard low-toned voices. Buck and Josiah. Followed by the sound of Josiah making a call. Shortly after, the couch dipped again.

“OK. We headed them off. Happy now?” Buck’s voice was tight.

“Yeah,” Chris said. The force of his own emotions was causing the room to revolve ever faster. “Nathan, how’s he doing?”

“He needs to be in hospital.”

“Oh crap,” Chris said again, feeling like the couch was up-ending. “I’m gonna throw...”

It wasn’t long after that he began to see everything through a sea of red. He felt the odd, painful smart of heat against his face, the icy burn of cold. His ribs and jaw ached and he felt sick as a dog. Distorted flames and odd shapes were swimming before him. This room – he knew this room. It was strange that he was seeing it from this angle and he couldn’t understand why, couldn’t fix on the sights and sounds around him, just that he felt as if they should be familiar but they weren’t. Not quite. Then there was a low humming, a vibration, something pressed close against his face. With all his strength he tried to lift a hand to drag it away but something – or someone – was resisting him.

“Nuh-uh, buddy.” 

“Let ‘em help you, Chris. Come on.” 

He felt a nauseating weightlessness, and the humming became so loud he couldn’t hear anything else. Not for the longest time. And then he was moving, squinting against bright lights. The hospital. Oh, God was it the hospital? 

He knew it from the smell.

The hearth, the hospital. Something had happened in between but he couldn’t remember. Something had happened before the hearth, too.

Machines blipped, annoying. Warm liquid trickled under his skin, disconcerting.

“You’re all right, honey,” he heard an achingly familiar voice say in his ear, thought he felt the warmth of a longed-for breath on his cheek. 

And that confused and saddened him.

*

They’d agreed a rule in the past. 

It was when Buck got clipped by a bullet, mere days after Ezra had joined them. The apparently straightforward injury had ended up putting Buck in the OR for a life-saving operation, during the course of which the rest of them were told to expect the worst, and a good deal of unraveling took place. The ‘Wilmington Rule’, as it was henceforth known, stated there was no practical use in them all crowding into hospital waiting rooms together. Or hanging around en masse at bedsides come to that. Neither was it sensible that any one of them martyred themselves in a vigil for a fallen comrade more than any other. They didn’t need to prove their loyalty to one another that way. Working it in shifts made better sense, and ended up helping the hospital and their wounded more in the long term. 

Of course, it didn’t stop them squabbling about who was better suited to which kind of role and in what priority, but it was Nathan in particular who was keen on the basic principle.

“Emotions don’t help,” he was fond of telling them. “Getting in the way doesn’t help.”

“And in any case,” Josiah had added one time, “who wants to play a deathbed scene with their co-workers?”

Even so, Nathan’s leading query as to why the hell they all thought they were going to the hospital this time was met with initial quiet.

He followed it up with a soothing addition. “We’ve all been in it together, trying to save their asses as a team. I get that. But the Rule states...”

“We know what it states.” Vin spoke tetchily from the back of the Explorer. Leaving the ranch locked up once the chopper had finally taken off, he’d finally admitted he didn’t feel up to driving anymore, was probably better suited to being at home in a darkened room with an icepack over his eyes. The fact that he wasn’t was making him short-tempered. “And remember it applies to you, too, Nathan. Think you mighta forgot that last time.”

“Last time?” J.D. asked.

“When Josiah was in with the busted ribs and Nathan decided he was the only one to stand vigil?”

“Oh yeah.” J.D. sounded as if he wished he hadn’t asked.

“Hey,” Vin said tiredly, “I’m not taking a swing, Nathan. Just sayin’. We all need sleep just the same, but we got two of our boys down and we have to cover that.”

In the end, Nathan dropped J.D. and Vin back at the 11th floor to dump the kit and set up a de-brief before they went home to try and get some sleep. They all knew the chopper had arrived at the Denver Health Medical Center safely, but that there wasn’t any definitive news. Nathan came into the hospital to ask the questions he was burning to ask and wouldn’t rest until he had. Both casualties were in a serious condition, came the standard report. The medical team were hoping to stabilize them over the course of the new day.

“I need maybe four hours,” Nathan told Josiah and Buck.

“You need at least six.” Josiah was growly and assertive. “Don’t you give us any bullshit, Nathan Jackson. We need you rested and in good shape.”

They were all stunned by the long night, the adrenaline overload, the disorienting effect of a busy Emergency Room buffeting their shredded nerves. Nathan found out he wasn’t going to get to see either Chris or Ezra right now, so raised the white flag and left Josiah and Buck to it. They’d make a round of calls when they had something important to say or there was something urgent needed doing.

“You and me,” Josiah said to Buck as the double doors closed.

“Ain’t no sense being down here.” Buck looked around the triage area where they’d pitched up on the trail of the double admission into an overstretched ER. “Let’s get up to the fourth floor. Track our boys down.”

“Coffee machine,” Josiah said musingly. “Chairs.”

And it was only when they were up there on the chairs with musty-tasting machine coffee in their hands that Buck said, “He looked pretty bad, right? Ezra.”

Josiah took a tentative sip, as if he didn’t really want it but thought he should. “Didn’t look good.”

“Crap,” Buck said. As was usual with Buck, all his emotions were beginning to loosen and find a way out. “Who were those guys, Josiah, and how the hell did this happen? What was all the no-cops business from Chris? Just as this outfit was starting to feel... like it was good! Like we really knew what we were doing! And Ezra... an injury like this could finish his career – you know that, right?”

“It’s not over yet, Buck.” Josiah closed his eyes and felt the room whirling around him. His hands were shaky with exhaustion and he wasn’t sure he could continue making sense. 

Buck drained his cup of coffee and crumpled it with a noisy cracking sound.

The doctor came round about a half hour later.

Chris’s condition was leveling out. He was concussed, badly bruised around the kidneys and ribs, his injured knee was swollen again, but there were no fractures and the initial worries about damage to his eye socket were unfounded. They still had him under close watch but his temperature was stable and he’d stopped taking swings at the nurses. No reason why he couldn’t have a couple of visitors, but only for a short while. Likely they’d keep him in at least until tomorrow, maybe the day after. He was out of immediate danger.

Ezra, not so much.

“Yeah, fractured pelvis,” Josiah reported gloomily to Nathan on the phone. He’d given it a few hours before calling the others, just so some of them would get some rest. “Surgical investigation found an internal bleed. Like you thought. They’re just concentrating on keeping him stable before pinning him back together. Nasty injury. Could have been much worse though, brother. And all along the line we did the right thing. Chris did. And you did.”

_“Still unconscious?”_ Nathan, scratchy-voiced from sleep, sounded as if he thought he was being fobbed off.

“Yeah, he’s pretty sick – in intensive care. Chris we’ve seen and he’s doing just about OK. Physically, anyhow.”

_“Man, don’t tell me. He’s on his own case, blaming himself somehow, all that shit?”_

“Oh yes. And how. Although, you know... they said he was lucid but he’s kind of repeating himself.”

_“He doesn’t need this,”_ Nathan said, helpless. _“He really doesn’t need it. Anyhow, I’m coming down. You guys need to get your asses home, don’t wait for me.”_

Of course they waited for him, and of course the Wilmington Rule almost fell apart again for a while as Vin decided to turn up too. He was unshaven, bruisy eyed and his hair was damp. It was snowing again.

Buck, desperately in need of sleep now, was pretty much all over the place. He was still raging repetitively as they met up in the Visitors’ area. “What I want to know is how the hell Ezra managed to fall down the stairs in the first place? I mean, how does that happen? What is with him?”

“Reckon things are pretty much a mess at Chris’s,” Vin said wearily.

“What do you even mean by that?”

“Just that if there was no light, a bunch of stuff spread around... Can tell you don’t like it, Bucklin, but sounds like an accident waiting to happen.”

“You sayin’ it was Chris’s fault?”

“Whoah, whoah.” Josiah cut through the spiraling atmosphere, louder and more urgent than anyone else. “We don’t know what happened, but we’ll find out, all right? Later. Point is, Ezra’s in a bad way and Chris isn't much better – nothing much else matters far as I can see. Now, brother Buck, someone’s going to give me their car keys and I’m going to drive your punchy ass home. Looks like we’re covered here.”

Buck dropped his head into one hand for a moment, as if it was almost too heavy to hold up. “Yeah,” he said, voice muffled. His shoulders heaved and he looked up, totally wrecked. “My punchy ass needs to sleep, I got it. Keep us in the loop, OK?”

“You and J.D. both,” Vin said, touching a hand to Buck’s ribs. “Kid’s gone down to kick off the report. Don’t seem to need as much sleep as the rest of us.”

“Lucky pup.”

“Not so much of the pup,” Nathan said to their backs as Buck and Josiah exited the doors. “Gonna take a full-grown attack dog to sell this mess to Travis.” He looked keenly at Vin as the doors swung closed. “You all right?”

Vin blew out his cheeks in some resignation. “Can’t shift it,” he admitted, prodding his head. “Grandma would probably say we ain’t finished takin’ the hits yet.”

“Would I have liked Grandma?”

“You’d’ve plumb hated her.” Vin grinned faintly.

“You get some sleep?”

“Couple hours.”

“You don’t need to be here you know. You could still be at home recovering.”

“I do need to be here, Nathan. Reckon you’re gonna go talk to the docs and I’m gonna go visit Chris – if they’ll let me. Someone needs to find out what the hell’s been goin’ on.”

“Your I.D. will get you in,” Nathan said. “But don’t overdo it. We looked in earlier and he’s kind of untethered.” 

“Yeah, I was afraid of that.”

Sure enough, Chris had his eyes closed when Vin came in, but he didn’t seem like he was resting. He was pasty pale around the lips, his face a livid patchwork of dark purple and red, a bunch of stitches over one eyebrow. His hair was plastered to his head like lank straw and he was still hooked up to an IV line. Hell, never mind kind of untethered, Vin thought. Chris looked liked he’d been dragged several times round a rocky field.

He sat down quietly not wanting to disturb him, but after a moment or two, Chris opened the better of his two eyes.

“Afternoon,” Vin said, leaning forward so he could be seen clearly.

“Vin.”

“Yup.”

“What a fuck-up.”

“Well thanks for that, cowboy.”

A wrinkle of the forehead. “You’re funny.”

“I try my best. How you feelin’?”

Chris made an inarticulate noise. He lifted his arm to look at the IV and then groaned again. His speech was clear but labored. “What a goddamned bitching fuck-up.”

“We’re doin’ OK.”

“Ezra?”

“Yeah, so Ezra’s not doin’ OK.”

“Tell me.”

Vin sighed. “Bust his pelvis in that fall, had a bleed. Broke his arm, cracked some ribs. But he ain’t concussed as bad as you. Must have a thicker skull.”

Chris exhaled shakily.

“They’re on top of it.” Vin was firm. “He’s sedated, will be for a while. So it’s pretty serious, but not critical. OK? Gonna need some care all right, but he’ll be fine.”

“My fault,” Chris said thickly.

“How’d you work that one out? You push him down the stairs?”

“I take it back. You’re not funny.”

“Jus’ because it happened in your house don’t make it your fault. And it was nobody’s fault those guys picked on you to burgle.”

Chris was quiet for so long that something prickled the back of Vin’s neck.

“Chris?”

“You’re right,” Chris said and Vin didn’t like the tension that had crept into his voice. “Nobody’s damned fault. Except Ezra shouldn’t’ve had to come babysit me. And I shouldn’t’ve been drinking liquor with those pills. And the house shouldn’t have been in the state it was.” He paused. “Ezra was trying to help me when he went down.”

“OK.” Vin looked at the opposite wall, counted to ten, then he looked back at Chris. “And now you’re trying to help him, right?”

He wasn’t sure how Chris’s one eye managed to gleam with such suspicion and defensiveness, but it did. “What do you mean?”

“All the no-cops bullshit? Ezra nearly busting a gut sayin’ sorry to you?”

“He was?”

“Over and over when they were loadin’ you two on to the chopper. You didn’t know which way was up by then but I was right there and Ezra was getting himself in one hell of a state not knowing where you were. Paramedics were yappin’ because you weren’t responsive and Ezra jus’ kept sayin’ it was his fault.”

Chris sucked in a harsh breath. He got his good hand to his face, rubbed his jaw, then dropped it back on the bed with a thump. “That was the shot Nate gave him. Blow to the head.”

Even without Buck and all his wild, punchy-assed questions, Vin would have guessed something had gone down out at the ranch, and that Chris just didn’t intend to tell them what. Maybe he was protecting someone.

“Did Ezra know those guys?”

Chris hissed. “Christ’s sake, Vin.”

“You ain’t gonna tell me, are you?”

“No. And for everybody’s sake, you’re aren’t going to ask.”

“Huh,” Vin said. He shifted his boots on the floor, counted to ten again. “Well whatever happened, you sure do look like shit.”

Chris relaxed a tad. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. I had one motherfucker of a headache but seein’ you’s makin’ it feel a whole lot better.”

“Glad to be of service.”

It hadn’t taken Vin long to make up his mind. To know where to draw his line in the sand. While he didn’t think of himself as much of a leader, he figured the others would fall in behind him easy enough. And A.D. Travis was about to go on leave, hopefully wouldn’t want the hassle. Sometimes you just had to circle the wagons, take things on trust – even if nobody told you exactly why. Whoever those guys were, Chris and Ezra had dealt with them, in their own way and for their own reasons.

That they were both alive was enough to make Vin ready to back off, for now at least. Getting Buck onside with that might be a problem, though. Their long association meant that Chris and his problems were personal to Buck in a way they weren’t to any of the others. He stared out of the window.

“Still snowing?” Chris asked after a while.

Vin pulled his mind away from Buck. “And how. You and Ezra are lucky being all cosy in here.”

“Don’t think he’ll feel lucky once he wakes up.”

“Yeah,” Vin said. “Nathan says he’s in for a rough ride.”

Chris seemed to think about that for a while. Then he said, “So you staying?”

“What do you think?”

“All right then,” Chris said, and seemed to relax a little more. “You do that.”

*

It was some twenty-four hours before Chris got in to see Ezra. And another forty-eight before the patient was anything other than drifting and bewildered. 

There was thinking time in those interim hours, once he’d thoroughly plumbed the depths of his own debilitation and discomfort for a while. He was discharged after one night, driven back to the ranch by Vin and Buck after he’d been into the ICU. Hell, he’d made himself thoroughly miserable looking at a post-operative Ezra in traction, still out, buried under sheltering layers of medication. 

The way home was on cleared roads through banks of hard-packed snow. All the way Chris had wondered when Buck was going to ask him about the burglary again.

“I’m stayin’,” Vin said once they were through the door. It seemed to be his catchphrase at the moment, and there was no messing with Tanner when he had that voice on him.

“We cleared up for you, all of us.” Buck sounded rightfully proud. The kitchen was neat, the hall swept of debris, the living room tidied and vacuumed. It felt as if the heating system had been brought back online, too, and Buck said they’d had the electrics checked over and new fuel for the generator was on order. All Sarah’s things had been placed carefully back in the boxes, and moved to one side of the room, and the basket by the fire was full of logs. The stair balustrade had tape across the broken area and Josiah had said he’d fix it soon as he could. Chris didn’t want to stay in the hallway staring at it.

“Thanks, appreciate it.” There didn’t seem much else to say. In the living room he looked around, an acid slop of unease in his stomach. As if there was unfinished business, or as if the place wasn’t quite his own anymore.

“There’s food in,” Buck added. “And the garage doors work. So you just relax, and go to bed.”

Chris baulked at being told what to do, but he guessed things were going to be like this for a while.

The next day Nathan called to say Ezra had come round. 

“Sick, cranky, and giving everyone a hard time,” were the actual words he used. After another night, when the hospital had clearly found the right mix of meds, Nathan claimed Ezra had cheered up, was almost affable.

Subdued, was what Chris thought by the time he finally made it back.

The rest of them had finally gotten a handle on the Wilmington Rule, had made sure one of them was either with Ezra or in the near vicinity the whole time. Being next up on the unwritten roster made Chris feel like he was getting his feet back under him at last.

When he arrived at Ezra’s room he knew a nurse had just been in to top up the shunt. He’d been told that although the patient would probably seem fairly alert, he probably wouldn’t be for very long. Nathan had explained the delicate balance between bearable existence and functional at any level above zombie.

“So,” Chris said. “I’ve been talking to the doctors, getting the latest.”

“Newsflash.” Ezra’s voice was treacly with his southern accent, as if his defences were down.

“If you like.”

“I’m pretty fucked?”

Chris felt guilty but there was actually something he quite liked about an Ezra with his hair in complete disarray, floating between sharp and mellow.

“Yeah.”

“What did I miss?”

It figured he wouldn’t let that one lie.

“They took the deal,” Chris said quietly. “Punched my goddamned lights out again, and then left.”

“An ATF junkie and his dealer.” Ezra’s voice bubbled with sudden medicated glee. 

Chris gave him a look. “Yeah, they decided we’d leave ‘em alone to stop that getting out.” The annoyance of letting perps go free scratched at him. “Didn’t leave much of a trail. No prints. You even know their names? What car they were driving?”

“I didn’t see the license plate. It was snowing.”

“Right.”

“They were not gentlemen, that’s all I know.”

One side of Ezra’s face scrunched up for a second or two, and when it un-scrunched Chris could see the sharp little pain lines around his eyes. 

“The others?”

“They don’t know. Not about you and Black Hawk. Not about where those guys came from, and not about the deal.”

“And they’re cool with that?” Ezra’s scratchy voice hiked in disbelief.

“I wouldn’t say they’re cool. But reckon you can trust them not to dig long as I say so.”

“Travis?”

“He knows less than they do, and in any case he’s headed to Florida.”

Ezra took a few deep breaths. “Listen, I don’t-” he began, but Chris waved him silent.

“We both messed up.”

“You can at least let me apologize.”

“Fine, but like I told you earlier, you need to stop with the gambling. Things can’t go on like they are with you, I won’t let them.”

“Lord,” Ezra said, a hint of unease and impatience in his manner. “OK, I get it.”

“Good,” Chris said, easing back on the throttle. “And now?”

“Thought we agreed I’m pretty fucked.”

“Well here’s how I see it.” Chris clenched one hand slightly in readiness. “You need bed rest, calm, plenty of it, and looking after. You can’t stay in here because we all know you’ll get some hospital infection soon as our backs are turned, just end up worse off. And we all know your ma would try her best at your place, but she’s not cut out of the Florence Nightingale mold and you’d end up killing each other.”

“I’ll hire a nurse.”

Chris snorted. “Like any of us can afford twenty four hour care on our salary.”

Ezra conceded that with a shrug. “And like the Bureau would pay.”

“I got a better idea.”

“Leave me to get on with it?”

“Tempting,” Chris said, “But no. You can’t walk, Ezra. For a couple of weeks you aren’t going to be able to do jack shit. So, you need looking after – and I need something to do.”

Ezra actually made an attempt to laugh at the absurdity of that, but it was clearly not an action that agreed with him. “Wait a moment.” He squinted, one eyed, riding a wave of something nasty, and Chris felt his stomach plunge slightly to see how he couldn’t get comfortable – not even surgically held together and doped up. “I get to be your project?”

“If you like.”

“And whose brilliant idea is this? Not the hospital’s I’m sure. It’s got to be Mr. Jackson.” There was a distinct edge to his voice again, all geniality gone, head lifting off the pillow. He’d never liked being obliged to dance to Nathan’s tune. “And with respect, I’m not sure I’m the only one in need here.”

It would about sum up the entire year, Chris thought, if he and Ezra ended up having a row in a hospital room about who was going to be looking after who.

“No, actually,” he said. “It’s my idea – haven’t even mentioned it to Nathan. I figure it’d be mutually beneficial.”

“More like mutually assured destruction.”

“You have a very cynical streak, Ezra.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, but you don’t convince me for one minute.”

Ezra let his head drop back on the pillow, clearly getting tired. “You know,” he said, pausing to get his breath. “You don’t have to make anything up to me. If that’s what this is.”

“Well OK, you’re right, there’s a selfish angle. Sure there is. If I hadn’t been in trouble, if you hadn’t come out to the ranch, if I hadn’t let my damned house become a safety hazard.”

Wearily, Ezra flapped a hand at him. “If the others didn’t care so much. If the weather hadn’t been so bad. And mostly if I hadn’t been to Black Hawk.” He lifted his head again a fraction when Chris didn’t say anything. “I could go on.”

Chris felt the ease of a smile creeping up on him. “And I’m sure you will. Out at the ranch.”

“You mean this is less of a suggestion, and more of an order? It’s Larabee being a hard-ass again, punishing me and yourself at the same time?”

“Something like that.”

“All right,” Ezra said, closing his eyes. The tide of morphine was beginning to turn against him again. “Fine. You do know it’s unethical to take advantage of people in hospital, right? Browbeat invalids into making decisions against their better nature...” His voice was becoming more and more indistinct, upper body twitching under waves of restlessness and inertia.

Chris got to his feet. “Yeah, I know.” He stood looking down at him for a moment, lashes downswept on the pale cheeks, stress showing in the hollows of his face. It seemed to make so much sense – recuperation somewhere quiet and comfortable, with someone willing to keep an eye on him, through thick and thin. Chris wasn’t really quite sure where this idea had come from. Maybe it was guilt, pure and simple. Probably Josiah would put another spin on it if he dared, some psychobabble crap about Chris needing to look after people he cared about. Fill a hole. 

“You need anything?” he whispered.

Ezra’s throat moved sluggishly as he swallowed, but still he didn’t open his eyes. His head moved against the pillow in a vague shake.

“Well just get some sleep, ‘kay? Get some sleep and get better.” 

Chris was going to do the usual guy thing then and ruffle Ezra’s hair, but he knew Ezra didn’t at all appreciate having his hair mussed. Even though it was completely disheveled anyway. Instead he stroked two knuckles against the side of his head as if smoothing down a curl. Then he pulled the blankets up over the bare shoulder of the broken arm. He knew from recent experience how it was always too hot or too cold in these damned places, and Ezra’s fat medical file suggested if there was a secondary infection to be caught he’d do his best to oblige. 

“One of the boys’ll be in later. Maybe two if you’re unlucky.” He was relieved that one corner of Ezra’s mouth twitched in reaction at that.

Making sure there was water within reach, and the nurse call button, Chris exited the room, hand already straying to his pocket and his cellphone. The next thing would be explaining the plan.

“Oh no,” Nathan said soon as he heard. “No, no, no.” Which was kind of predictable. They were back in the office by then, where Chris had come to pick up some stuff from his desk. “Really not sure about this, Chris. It’s no picnic recovering from an injury like Ezra’s, you know. It’s slow, tricky, and if things go badly for him it won’t be easy on you. You have to keep on top of things, and most of all you have to know when things aren’t going right and act quickly.”

“Not proposing to do it all, Nate. Just to be the person who’s there. We’ll get help on the professional care, all the physical therapy, like Sarah did with Hank.” Chris took a slightly hitched breath. It still wasn’t possible to even think about saying her name without it getting hold of him by the throat. “Couple of nurse visits a day to take care of stuff, check him out. But I’ll be there to make sure he rests, eats, takes his meds, has someone to talk to if he wants. Otherwise.... Jeez, otherwise....”

“Otherwise,” Vin said, “You’re going to drive yourself crazier than you already are racketing about that ranch all on your own for the next however long it is.”

“However long is it?” That was Buck.

“I don’t know. Four weeks maybe.”

Just before heading to the airport Travis had suggested Chris take the time he never took when he was first bereaved. The weeks of compassionate leave they’d tried to press on him and that he’d fearfully, stubbornly, refused. It was the kind of ‘suggestion’ from the Assistant Director that it wouldn’t be wise to refuse. 

“And after that?” Nathan demanded. “Ezra’s recovery’s going to take twice that time.”

Chris gritted his teeth. “I’ll work something out.”

“Is this anything to do with you feeling like shit because it happened on your watch?” Josiah asked, in that mild tone that suggested he didn’t feel mild about it at all.

“You been talking to Ezra?”

“What does Ezra think about all this anyhow?” Nathan demanded.

“He’s cool with it.”

“What you mean is the poor bastard’s feeling so damned lousy he’d say yes to anything.”

“Probably. But that doesn’t change anything. Still a good idea.” He could sense more than one of them winding up to tell him he was being a pig-headed fool and it would come back to bite him.

But then, “Reckon Chris’s right,” Vin said slowly. He sent a wry grin in Chris’s direction. “Two of them can help each other out, and at least we’ll know where they are. Hell, we can keep an eye on both of ’em at the same time.”

“And we’ll only have one lot of visits to make,” J.D. added, and then looked embarrassed. “Not that it’s about us, of course.”

“Wilmington Rule wins out again, huh?”

There was a little pause while that sunk in. “Well I think we should drink to it,” J.D. said in the end.

Vin didn’t like that idea. “Without Ezra? That don’t seem fair.”

“We could drink to him. To his recovery.”

Josiah laughed at the young man’s enterprising spirit. “Chris?” He turned to him. “You up to a drink?”

“You know what? I don’t think I am.” 

It wasn’t even the liquor – he could have used a drink – but not in a crowded bar. The others wanted some serious downtime, to play pool somewhere noisy, offset some of the worry and fatigue. Chris wasn’t ready for that yet. He didn’t even feel part of it. The black cloud at his back wasn’t going to just disappear because he’d been beaten around the head by a couple of thugs. 

“Sure?” Josiah looked concerned.

“Sure. But I’ll stand you boys some beers, to thank you for coming through the goddamned snow to haul our asses out of the fire.”

“Only it kind of turned out we didn’t need to,” Buck said, the faintest spritz of sarcasm in his tone.

“Ezra’s patient notes say we really, really did.” Nathan was a little gloomy.

“I should get back home,” Chris said. “Start tidying up, setting the place up a bit better.”

“Your crocked knee-bone?” 

“Is fine, don’t worry. Look, I’m not planning to redesign the whole house. Just want to...”

“Prepare for your ever-so-picky house guest?” Josiah’s tone was gently teasing.

“Something like that.”

“Figure you’re a braver man than any of us then.” 

Chris wasn’t so sure about that, but he was beyond arguing the point. Leaving Josiah to shepherd the others, he called the Saloon, told them to set up a tab in his name. Then he gathered up his things and left the building. All the way down to the underground car lot he was aware of the covert glances of other agents and staff at his blackened eyes and cut face. They looked like they thought he was leaving for good.

The air was still sharp and cold outside. According to the radio more convulsions of bad weather were on the way, and Chris hoped Vin wasn’t going to suffer from every one. And that they wouldn’t curtail his pig-headed plan before it had even gotten started. The roads downtown were largely quiet. It was strange leaving the area and knowing he wouldn’t be back for a while. When he’d been sent home the day of the snowstorm he hadn’t been in much of a state to care one way or another. This time at least he felt as if he had a clear purpose.

It was on his mind all the way out of town and on to I36. To get Ezra on his feet, get the whole team back to doing what they did best. No excuses, no absentees, and that meant him too.

He remembered the mash-up of insight and mockery in Ezra’s voice a few days’ ago.

_Larabee goes down, the whole team goes down._

“Not yet,” he said out loud, glancing in the rearview as he picked up speed. And then he took in a breath, put the Ram into cruise control and headed for home.


End file.
